Jane Austen ODE TO PITY literary analysis | Jane Austen juvenilia poem-18th Century poetry analysis

Analysis of Jane Austen’s playful poem Ode to Pity (1793), in Volume the First from Austen’s Juvenilia, focusing on allusions to earlier 18th century poetry (especially by William Collins, Joseph Warton, & Thomas Gray).
In the lecture I analyse poetry allusions in Jane Austen’s early writing (her poem Ode to Pity) showing ways that Jane Austen pokes fun at literary conventions (much in the same way as she does in her later novels, such as in the characters of Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility & Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey). I examine the melancholic pastoral conventions of 18th century poetry, much of which would go on to inspire the sorrowful, gloomy, pitiful imagery that dominated the popular Gothic fiction & sentimental novels of the late 18th century.
You can see the manuscript of Ode to Pity here janeausten.ac.uk/manuscripts/...
JANE AUSTEN POEM
JANE AUSTEN ANALYSIS
JANE AUSTEN JUVENILIA
JANE AUSTEN WRITING
18th CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE
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jane austen ode to pity

[@DrOctaviaCox]

If you like the work I do, then you can support it here: www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=D8LSKGJP2NL4N Thank you very much indeed for watching my channel.

[@RobynCoburn]

Every time I heard “Myrtle Grove” I recalled “Maple Grove” from Mrs. Elton in EMMA. Something of the same slyness there.

[@mrs.manrique7411]

Slyness! That’s the word.

[@crystalward1444]

😆 too funny.

[@evelinharmannfan7191]

There is a little part in "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, that describes the courtship of Boris Drubetskoy and Julie Karagina. They both proclaim to be sensitive poetic natures, but just fake the attitude to impress each other. It is a tiny little piece, but full of irony. Since the novel is set in the same time period as Austen lived, it might interest someone.

[@londongael]

What fun! I'm glad you mention in the video that this parody is, or may be, "affectionate", and, in the comments, that young writers cut their teeth on the previous generation's cliches! Cliches they probably lapped up themselves, when even younger. :-) Funny as it is, this poem is also rather charming, with its flawless metre and rhyme scheme, despite being a mere checklist of Gothic/Sentimental "props". They're all there: the pale moon, the nightingale, the thrush and the dove (never mind it's the middle of the night!), the hut, the cot, the grot, the chapel queer (another "poetic" inversion) etc. It's almost as if they are being ticked off on a clipboard, or as if young Jane had set herself to see how many of them she could work in. It reminds me of how my brothers and I, as kids, would laugh at and mock cliche-ridden television shows, whilst at the same time enjoying them immensely. I feel the affection, too, not just in Northanger Abbey, but also in Mansfield Park. Fanny, the most fondly treated of Austen's heroines, is also a bit of a "Goth", as we see when she visits the chapel at Sotherton. "I am disappointed...This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be "blown by the night wind of Heaven". No signs that a "Scottish monarch sleeps below"." Can anything Fanny likes be *all* bad? At the end, I read it as the mouldering Abbey that "peeps", rather than the moon - but in such a nonsensical collection of tropes, who can say with certainty? If it is the moon, it can't seem to make its mind up whether it is visible or not! I don't think it is possible to parody so accurately something you don't, in your heart of hearts, love - despite being aware of its flaws.

[@nickwilliams7547]

Ha! I'd never thought of Fanny as a goth :)

[@londongael]

@@nickwilliams7547 She does seem an unlikely one, doesn't she? :-) But the modern Goth is the heir to all that 18thc pale moonlight and mouldering abbeys, so why not?

[@mrs.manrique7411]

I think the moon peeps since “her” in “her head” prior to this description refers back to the feminine personification of Luna.

[@londongael]

@@mrs.manrique7411 I do see the ambiguity. And it *would* be slightly odd to call an abbey "she". What with noisy, silent streams and nocturnal doves, perhaps not even Jane was sure! 😂

[@mrs.manrique7411]

I was thinking about your observation of Fanny’s comical expectations of Sotherton. Perhaps the whole chapter reveals how the family is insensible in two ways at once - lacking both sense and sensibility.

[@bethanyperry5337]

Forgive me if this is out of context but I’ve recently binge watched several of your lectures … this is a thank you for your mention of the Mullen book What Matters in Jane Austen. I just finished reading it with thorough enjoyment !

[@AD-hs2bq]

Impressive. Through your effort here, I understand the extent Austen studied other writers to arrive at her own characterizations. Thank you.

[@kristinakumpfhuber4459]

I love your videos. You make literature so much more accessible. Thank you. Would you consider taking a look at Daphne Du Murier's novel Jamaica Inn?

[@mrs.manrique7411]

Did “obedt humle servt” make anyone else think she was showing how overused such a phrase is by abbreviating it? I can imagine her speaking aloud and running by this part quicker than the rest as a sort of comedic delivery.

[@nickwilliams7547]

Thank you as always Octavia. I do enjoy your insightful videos, especially when you cover aspects of Jane Austen such as this that I've never considered before. Have a great weekend!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

How do you interpret Jane Austen’s wonderfully playful poem ‘Ode to Pity’? Can you see any other literary allusions made by Austen?

[@frankupton5821]

Four disjointed comments: 'Myrtle Grove' reminds me of Maple Grove, Mr Suckling's beautiful seat in Emma; the songs of thrushes and doves are both repetitive, like some poetry; the stream running down the road may be a sarcastic comment on the quality of road maintenance by turnpike trusts; 'eke'....'too' is a pleonasm that clumsily preserves the poem's metre.

[@irishlady5051]

As you were talking, I suddenly thought of discussions in both Sense & Sensibility and Northanger Abbey about how best to describe scenes in nature and what were the “proper” words to use when doing so. Remember when Edward visited the Dashwoods and explained to Marianne that he would use the incorrect (in her opinion) words to describe a tree, for example?? It feels like this was another way in which Jane Austen pointed out cliches commonly in use or mocked the people who used them.

[@polinanikulina]

I appreciate your efforts, it's a great pleasure to understand a great author's mind.

[@dranyakishinevsky]

Excellent videos, as always. I'd still love to hear what the basis was for the rumors about Elizabeth and Mr Darcy being on the verge of an engagement shorty after Jane and Mr Bingley got engaged. Mr Darcy seemed to keep his distance from Elizabeth at that time.

[@londongael]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/aauoiK2OmNKUbLs Dr Cox's video on that very topic.

[@dranyakishinevsky]

Yes, I love that video and have watched it a few times. It was very enlightening about Charlotte and Mr Collins' motives for sharing the information with lady Catherine. Towards the end she mentions that the basis for the rumor is a separate issue that we can get into in another video. I would love to hear about it.

[@londongael]

​@@dranyakishinevsky I was just editing my original answer, as I had realised (belatedly) that you are talking about later on in the novel - sorry! I agree, it would be an interesting video. My guess (and it is only a guess), is that the fact that one of two close friends has just got engaged, and one of the Bennet sisters has just got married, would be enough to set tongues wagging in Meryton. Not to mention Lady Catherine's recent visit - as Lizzy points out to her at the time. It doesn't fully explain why Elizabeth and Darcy should be paired though, since, as far as anyone knows, she can't stand him.

[@dranyakishinevsky]

Yes, exactly, and it is the rumor that brings lady Catherine to visit Elizabeth, but how did it start before lady Catherine even got there, when Mr Darcy was barely speaking to Elizabeth at that point. Perhaps they knew how she was received at Pemberly, but that's hardly something Lizzy publicized or bragged about.

[@londongael]

@@dranyakishinevsky Thank you - you're way ahead of me again. I need to put brain in gear before engaging typing fingers! Also, don't have text to hand. Do you have any theories?

[@liamodalaigh3201]

so enjoy your lessons.

[@jomarsh6449]

I just love your videos… please..please.. more!!

[@leewhiting3834]

Someone else has probably already commented on this, but this parody reminded me of the scene where the main character of Persuasion (I'm getting this from a movie as it has been a long time since I read the book) warns the captain whose fiancé has recently died of the danger of reading too much poetry. In the movie it seemed like a heartfelt warning, like the poetry was inclining him toward suicide, but maybe in the book it is funnier than that, especially as the captain so soon transfers his love to another woman.

[@crystalward1444]

Our hair looks great like that!

[@theloverlyladylo9158]

Upon hearing “Pamela An-“ my brain autocompleted “Pamela Anderson” and let me tell you, that mental mashup is fucking hilarious.

[@Heothbremel]

❤

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Thanks for watching.

[@Zukhane]

I was wondering if "pityful Nature" might also refer to: pity for women who are sensitive. Pity for their sensitivity that seems to make it "impossible" for them to function normally due to fainting all the time🤔

[@Tevildo]

I'm very much reminded of the parodies of Jean Ingelow written a century later: "In moss-prank'd dells which the sunbeams flatter And Heaven it knoweth what that may mean..."

[@valkyriesardo278]

Though I prefer the earlier days of Hollywood when sex was less explicit, still I find it odd there is no reference to it in Austen's narration or by any of her characters. Yet there are 4 weddings in the novel; Charlotte, Lydia, Jane, and Elizabeth. The ladies make no mention of the subject. Even the BBC miniseries with Firth is discrete. His wet shirt scene is an addition, Lydia and Wickham are shown only slightly undressed with a rumpled bed in the background. Darcy and Elizabeth share one kiss following the wedding. The book gives an epilog that spans some considerable time in their early marriage, enough time for LIzzie to become pregnant or at least mention the anticipation of children. Austen does not attempt to give the male characters much dialog from a limitation in her personal experience. Are we to conclude her experience of men remained very limited throughout her life?

[@naboolio8442]

Why would Austen choose to ape / parody this kind of pastoral poetry? Was it simply uncool popular poetry that her parental generation enjoyed & therefore a signifier of her “better”, more cool, modern taste? Was Jane a hipster?! Or were there similar parody pieces / critiques / opinions shared on c.18th poetry at the time?

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Ha! - to some extent, yes - every generation (literary ones included) rebel against their parents. And the marketplace really had become saturated with this kind of stuff (and the poetry of Collins, Warton, and Gray is far, far better than that of their imitators, who flooded the market with dull, state, repetitive imitations). The first generation Romantic poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, even Blake) railed against this kind of poetry-by-numbers too - that's what Wordsworth means when he talks about Poetic Diction (in the paratextual material to the Lyrical Ballads). Also, in a sense the aping or parodying or reworking of older writers is how a young author trains themselves up, in order to work out, discover, and better understand their own style. A kind of literary apprenticeship, you might say.

[@naboolio8442]

@@DrOctaviaCox thanks Dr Cox! It amazes me how many of the tropes & clichés still existed within the truly awful poetry myself & my peers wrote in high school 20 years ago. Truly poetry by numbers; so you're right it's how we learned! I'll never admit this to anyone... but my teenage best friend and I used to make each other laugh by writing parodies of poems often shared in obituaries. Forgive me 🙈