Austen’s Men, Immortality and Intertextuality

Abstract

Jane Austen’s men are central to her immortality and enduring appeal in the twenty-first century. This article links the intertextual imagining and re-imagining of Austen’s men with her own textual practice in the Romantic Era. Drawing on emerging methodologies for identifying and interpreting literary influence in the Romantic Era, threads of influence are established between Austen and contemporary Romantic-Era novelists, including Jane West, Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, Sydney Owenson and Jane Porter. Reading these novelists collectively reveals a shared authorial undertaking in interrogating and rewriting masculinity through fictional genres emerging in the Romantic Era.