Irony and Idyll

Marie Nedregotten Sørbø has taught English literature at Volda University College, Norway, for many years, including courses on film and fiction. For her doctoral degree she wrote a dissertation on the reception of Jane Austen on screen. Sørbø has contributed the Norwegian chapters to the volumes on The Reception of Jane Austen in Europe (2007) and The Reception of George Eliot in Europe (forthcoming, 2015). She was part of the leadership of the European COST Action “Women Writers in History” (2009-13), and is a Principal Investigator in the HERA funded project “Travelling TexTs 1790-1914: The Transnational Reception of Women’s Writing at the Fringes of Europe” (2013-16).

“Sørbø raises the possibility that the greatest irony in Mansfield Park is that Fanny marries the wrong guy after all.This is great stuff, an interpretation that explains why so many readers are dissatisfied with the novel. […] Its value lies in Sørbø’s close reading, which enables new insights about the texts she considers. More can be learned about Austen, irony, and film after all.” - Nora Nachumi, Stern College / Yeshiva University, in: JASNA News 31.3 (2015), pp. 21“At the October meeting, where we reprised the Montreal AGM, I enthused about the presentation by Norwegian scholar Marie Sørbø, and especially about her book Irony and Idyll [….] Sørbø’s thesis is that Jane Austen is all irony all the time, and that adaptors largely miss that, and thus, what they give us is ‘idylls’ – idealized stories set in an exotic time and place.““ ‘Women in Love’ […] Sørbø suggested would be an appropriate alternate title for Mansfield Park. […] This is Jane Austen poking a stick at the conventional love story of her era […].”-Elspeth Flood in Muse @ Musings, Newsletter of Jane Austen Society of North America Vancouver Region, No 121, February 2015, p.3

• Illustrations AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Responses to Austen’s Novels Part I: Pride and PrejudiceChapter One: The Novel: Austen’s Ironic Voice Chapter Two: The Novel: Courtship Couched in Irony Chapter Three: The 1940 Film: Old England Invoked Chapter Four: The 1980 Miniseries: Faithful to the Feminist Perspective? Chapter Five: The 1995 Miniseries: Faithful to the Female Audience Chapter Six: The 2005 Film: Everybody Loves the Bennet Family Part II: Mansfield ParkChapter Seven: The Novel: Class and Patriarchy Undermined Chapter Eight: The Novel: Marriage as a Game of Speculation Chapter Nine: The 1983 Miniseries: The Beauty of Tradition Chapter Ten: The 1999 Film: Aiming for Austen’s Voice Chapter Eleven: The 1999 Film: The Targets of Irony – Racism, Sexism and Class Chapter Twelve: The 2007 TV Film: “Some Much Needed Sizzle” Conclusion: The Voice of Irony and the Urge for Idyll Filmography Bibliography Index