Notes about creative paratopy: the Jane Austen case beyond its critical fortune

Abstract

Based on the theoretical framework of Discourse Analysis, particularly on studies about the literary discourse by Dominique Maingueneau (2006, 2012), we focus in this article Jane Austen’s authorship case, taking into account some biographical material and studies about the novelist, who has fans all over the world, among which many are organized in study groups. Considering the social context of England from the 18^th to the 19^th-century, when the work of Austen appeared, we tried to understand the consecration of this author, who published under a pseudonym first and is hailed nowadays by what we could refer as a “combative female identity”. We mobilize then three notions to explain this creative paratopy: the writer, the inscriptor and the person.