JANE AUSTEN’s mock-dedication letter | Jane Austen’s playful alliteration in her Juvenilia ANALYSIS

[@DrOctaviaCox]

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

[@HRJohn1944]

An accountant adds: "An absolutely adorable adolescent attempt at alliteration allows Austen to anticipate the aesthetics of Auden and others, and to advance her autonomous artistic adventurism". (PS I love your work)

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Absolutely! Austen: the acorn of the avant-garde

[@londongael]

O Outstanding Octavia! Our oracle, our oasis of observation on oldenday oeuvres, outshining all others! Our offerings of orchids openheartedly overflow!

[@pmarkhill519]

Impressive! ....omnipressive. 😉

[@kathleenfleming7519]

BRILLIANT!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Octavia is obliged and overwhelmed by your outrageously open-hearted offering.

[@lorisewsstuff1607]

👏👏👏

[@limerence8365]

@@DrOctaviaCox *gives orchids*

[@KristaHarrisSB]

Concerning Cox’s Challenge: My Cluttered but Curated Comment Clearly Consists of the Constraints and Conundrums of Consciously and Cunningly Constructing every Conceivable Connotation that it Can Carefully Collect to Comfortably Come Close for Cox’s Careful Consideration.

[@ellie698]

Brava!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Clever construction of your careful and colourful comment, Krista.

[@athag1]

I would not Set out to Surpass Jane Austen’s Superb Skill of Selecting words Starting with the Same letter, Similar Syllables and Sterling Synonyms and Stringing them together to form a Streamlined Sentence that, while Sounding like a Silly Spoof of the epistle novel, Simultaneously Serves to Satirise the Style, Stopping Short of Spurning it with Scorn; but I would like to Say that, when a Scholar makes a Scintillating, Super-informative Speech about Said Sentence, She Should Score a Silver Star for the Stellar Sermon. Signed: Show-off-and-Suck-up.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Splendidly sarcastic stream of sibilant sounds worthy of Sophia Sentiment herself! (Sophia Sentiment was the pen-name of a writer to JA’s brother James’ literary periodical ‘The Loiterer’, thought to be JA’s first published writing (issue no.9, 28 March 1789).)

[@athag1]

@@DrOctaviaCox Thank you for letting me know about Sophia Sentiment. I think she’s totally Jane Austen!

[@bonniehagan9644]

What fun!! Thank you, Dr. Cox. Here's my sentence: My beauteous brother Bill, I bristled to believe some band of blustering blackguards dare blow off your blistering bulletin telling of their bungling, their bull- headedness, and their overall bad behavior as mere bumptious bawling when, by all rights, it is the berating, the buffeting, the beating that any unbiased beak would blamelessly bring to bear on such brigands and blights on the body of well-bred human beings. Your bemused sibling, Bonnie.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Bravo Bonnie!

[@ellie698]

Brava!

[@coloraturaElise]

@@DrOctaviaCox I see what you did there!

[@rayati2284]

I would love to see more videos on Austen's Juvenilia!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

There is so much to say about them!

[@AD-hs2bq]

Thank you. Can’t get enough Austen and I love thorough and thoughtful approach to her talent.

[@marieokamoto8791]

Yes, the comedy is what keeps me coming back time and time again. Thank you!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

In the words of Lizzy Bennet, "she only smiles, I laugh".

[@SchlichteToven]

I'd love a video on Frances Burney's Evelina! I just finished reading it after hearing it mentioned in another of your videos (I believe it was), and I was struck with how modern it seemed for having been written in the 1770s. The tricks all the predatory men play to try to get Evelina are still done today. Getting her alone in the carriage and then not letting her get out - common today (also similar to Jane Austen's scene in Emma in which Mr Elton gets her alone in a carriage and tries to propose, except it was less alarming in Emma). That STARING guy who wouldn't look away even after Evelina looked back at him - I've had this happen to me a lot. And all the social faux-pas Evelina makes when she first goes out into society - I can definitely believe I would have done similar things if I'd lived in that time, and have done modern equivalents. I really like that book and if I'd lived in the 1770s I would have lined up at the bookshop for each installment!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Evelina's a great novel - and as you say it's easy to see why it was so popular at the time. (Although it does, perhaps, suffer from being slightly preachy in places - something, I think, that Austen deliberately counters in her novels.) Austen clearly drew on Burney throughout her writing, even the title 'Pride and Prejudice' is a reference to Burney. In the concluding chapter of Burney's Cecilia (1782), a character moralises that: "“The whole of this unfortunate business,” said Dr Lyster, “has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE... Yet this, however, remember; if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination" (Bk.10, ch.10 'A Termination').

[@marycrawford1594]

Many Decades ago I Dated a Dashing Darling whose Demeanor and Diverting Discourse led me to Deem him a Delightful Dream, who wined and Dined me while Demonstrating a Daring Disregard for Decorum and Decency and who Drew me towards a Delicious seduction but Ditched me within Days whereupon I Discerned in my Dearest a Diminishing Devotion after Detente, so I raised a Double Digit in his general Direction.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Delightfully done. Dashing but dastardly darlings so often deteriorate into dismally depressing dullards. He deserved the digit!

[@nunyabeezwacks1408]

@8:40 She finally gets to the letter.

[@sue1342]

Trusted Teacher OcTavia, I’m Trying To Tackle the Tricky Test you TormenTed us with, To Tease Together some Terribly TriTe and Tiresome Trivia alliTeraTively Tending Towards a Truly AusTenTacious ToTaliTy!

[@bonniehagan9644]

Austen-tatious! 😆

[@DrOctaviaCox]

The tormentingly tricky task has been thoroughly traversed and tested, and has terminated in triumph!

[@sarahmwalsh]

This is delightful!!! I loved what you said about Austen being in training for an author, and setting herself exercises and tasks like this to sharpen her linguistic skill and hone her talent. I'm going to suggest this alliterative sentence challenge as a prompt for a weekly wordplay contest in the Washington Post that I enter a lot. Is it known what word was scratched out and replaced with "clever" as in "clever collection"?

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Oh wow! - it would be wonderful to think of Austen's Clever Collection inspiring a wordplay contest hundreds of years later. Yes - the word "clever" overwrote the word "short".

[@TheCrochetCritters]

Dr. Cox's commentary contains courteous and clarifying keypoints, given after careful consideration, for crystal clear understanding of the author's concepts, compared to classless c*nts who clatter in their so called cottages (**cough** mr. Collins **cough** ), clouded by their captivation of considering themselves in control always, even if no one cares, and while clapping cheerily I ask dr. Cox to kindly keep creating videos on her computer, keenly accepting her challenge from behind my own keyboard. This would have been a lot easier if my native language had been English xD

[@jomarsh6449]

I love your videos!! Brilliant!!

[@kryscall4544]

Lads and lasses lean into laptops, listening to lithe limning of literary language, to litotes, allusions, and likewise to alliterative letters collected, lushly littered with light-hearted, lengthy lines, and also learning of a largesse, lo, of a loch-full of colloquialisms longlost and lately replaced with lispings like "lol," with all who listen to your soothing voice loving your lectures.

[@Human_folly]

I love it!❤ Would you consider doing Henry James?

[@MrArika116]

Dreamy Daffodils Decorated, DistressedDamsels Delivered,Dainty Dolls Decked,Dependent Daughters Doted, Docile Doves Domesticated, Delicate Dowagers Desired, yet Doer Does Deviated, Determined Directresses Debated, Devoted Dancers Defamed, dauntless Dames Dominated, Down the line dawn to dusk dome to dale (they are) derailed from deserved designation.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

A delectable delicatessen of ‘d’ designations!

[@leonorsantos9355]

Thank you!

[@coloraturaElise]

I so enjoy Jane's jovial Juvenilia, a joyride of a journal of her jocular jabs at the jerky junk du jour, a jolly jewel that takes us on a journey of jaunty jibes in jaconet muslin that jousted for the jugular and jettisoned the jaundiced jargon of her day, the juncture joining old and new styles and serving up a jorum of the judgment of Jericho that jostled their Jeremiad-ridden job of work into jeopardy, to the jubilation of the Janeites.

[@londongael]

This jolly jamboree jampacked with jingling jokes and jawbreaking juxtapositions jogs jazzily. I'm just jealous :-D

[@theeurasiaproject8497]

Tak!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Thank you very much - it is much appreciated.

[@theeurasiaproject8497]

@@DrOctaviaCox My pleasure - have you considered getting an account on Patreon?

[@amybee40]

@Dr Octavia Cox I don't know if it's considered "classic" literature yet, but my favorite epistolary novel is "Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn. Have you read it? I'd love to hear your analysis, especially of how it compares to the ones prevalent in Jane Austen's time.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

No, I haven't read it yet. It looks wonderfully playful.

[@amybee40]

@@DrOctaviaCox It is that! Also surprisingly deep. I hope you find time to read it soon.

[@felixtownn]

3:00

[@lastchancemonicam3948]

Playfully piquant and poised with perspicuous pretensions, this postcard of penmanship, permeates with proterons that predate Plath in poetry, and Pratchett in prose, the perspicacious pensiveness that pervades epistolic prints from that epoch. I will argue that soft vowels frequently do not affect alliteration as they are frequently omitted in actual speech and only the hearers brains' add them in- hence epistolic and epoch.

[@shortercrust]

Flying in the face of fear of fuelling fevered fantasies, I forward to you, my faithful friend, this folio of fables and fabrications, forged and formulated with fitting flair and finesse, forswearing all fancies but your favour and the furtherance of fun and fascination.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

A fantastic festival of fine Fs to feast on!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

What do you think of Austen’s playful alliterative letter?

[@bonniehagan9644]

Truthfully, I didn't know it existed, and I love the way it makes Jane Austen more real. I like seeing her as the comical cousin. I'm curious how much this will alter my future readings of her novels. Thank you again for taking the time to share your insights and spread literary joy. Looking forward to your videos every Friday!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

@@bonniehagan9644 I think that once one has read JA's juvenilia there is no turning back! She's boisterous, often rude, and 'unwomanly'. Her heroines, for instance, get blind drunk, steal, and even murder! - Anna Parker, for instance, in 'A Letter from a Young Lady, whose feelings being too strong for her Judgement led her into the commission of Errors which her Heart disapproved' (which is JA mocking classic conduct book language), writes, "I murdered my father at a very early period of my Life, I have since murdered my Mother, & I am now going to murder my Sister. I have changed my religion so often that at present I have not an idea of any left. I have been a perjured witness in every public trial for these last twelve Years; and I have forged my own Will. In short there is scarcely a crime that I have not committed-But I am now going to reform." You can see many of the same techniques deployed in the juvenilia used (more dexterously) in the 'mature novels' - for example, the ways in which JA satirises and laughs at novelistic conventions. Even in her 'serious' novels, there remains, I think, a focus on the comical.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

@@bonniehagan9644 And P.S. Thank you! I love the idea of spreading literary joy!

[@bonniehagan9644]

@@DrOctaviaCox After this uproariously funny description, I must read JA's juvenilia. Thank you so much for sharing.

[@jrpipik]

If I recall correctly, it was common for one writing an alliterative dedication to use the first initial of the dedicatee’s name. Since Austen couldn’t very well use her cousin’s first name, since it was hers, too, which might seem self-serving, she chose to use the first letter of her cousin’s surname, Cooper, to alliterate here. Clever, if you ask me.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

It's funny that you say that choosing the name "Jane" might have seemed self-serving. I think Austen was playing a joke (in the comical cousin mould) when she decided to name her most 'perfect' characters "Jane" - Jane Bennet (P&P) and Jane Fairfax (Emma) - especially as "pictures of perfection" made her "sick and wicked" (23 March 1817). And given that at the time these novels were published, of course, her own name was anonymous!

[@KierTheScrivener]

@@DrOctaviaCox I would love to see that analyze

[@corvuscorone7735]

Thank for your insights, time and time again! I truly appreciate your videos, especially the ones on Jane Austen!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

It's my pleasure - thank you for watching them.

[@an8588]

To Shirley St Clair, 'Me Auld Segotia' of Six Septennia counting, for her Sagacious, Sardonic advice about a Seemingly Sweet but Selfish Specimen of the opposite Sex. This Smellfungus, who could Sing Serenades like a Seraph, was also a former Sergeant in the Army, and he had Served in Sussex, Stockholm, Senegal, Spain, and Sicily. I was Swept off my feet, and Soon Sent out word that I was to become his Spouse. I was Swayed into Stopping his Seductions by a Supremely Scathing epistle of your writing, Saying that his Serene Semblance was masking the Seity of a Sexist, Senescent Sepulchre of a man, Such a rarity in his Sublime awfulness that he Should be a Subject of Study for Scientists, Since he is likely to Satisfy their curiosity on many Superintellectual questions on Such Strange Sagacity. -Alice, age 12 (writing from my mum's account with her permission)

[@kinseyhuckabey3823]

Hello! Love your page, I was wondering if you could explain with your contextual analysis’s when they talk about an “accomplished woman” I’m not quite sure the meaning of what Lizzie says

[@bethanyperry5337]

Wonderful as usual. “Author in training” apt!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Thank you! Or perhaps we might say 'Jane Austen Practising', as Virginia Woolf called the juvenilia in her review in the New Statesman (15 July 1922).

[@michaelconrad4445]

Jane Austen is playful, she's having fun, she's pressing against the envelope, it's easy to sort of put creative types in a box, they tried this with early Bob Dylan. Jane in many ways is a free spirit, she's trying things out. You can't over analyze without reflecting your self back on to her. I watch all your reviews and very much enjoy them, thank you.

[@cindymiller8950]

Courteous Cousin Catherine Claire Coventry convenes a county's chili cook off complaining of complications concerning country cousin Campbell Cramer of Cornwall whose children catered the crappy cookies which caused conditions of crowds coughing clouds of cinnamon.

[@ellie698]

We love quick, fun Jane Austen videos 🥰

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Jolly good!

[@renatanovato9460]

Challenge accepted.

[@psicologamarcelacollado5863]

So much fun, thank you!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

It's my pleasure.