J. McMaster

McMaster's lively study looks at the various codes by which Eighteenth-century novelists made the minds of their characters legible through their bodies. She tellingly explores the discourses of medicine, physiognomy, gesture and facial expression, completely familiar to contemporary readers but not to us, in ways that enrich our reading of such classics as Clarissa and Tristram Shandy , as well as of novels by Fanny Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen.

McMaster's lively study looks at the various codes by which Eighteenth-century novelists made the minds of their characters legible through their bodies. She tellingly explores the discourses of medicine, physiognomy, gesture and facial expression, completely familiar to contemporary readers but not to us, in ways that enrich our reading of such classics as Clarissa and Tristram Shandy , as well as of novels by Fanny Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen.

In these informed and entertaining essays, Juliet McMaster's recurring concern is with the interpenetration of intelligence with emotion among Jane Austen's characters. The author, a leading Jane Austen scholar, begins with an exploration of Austen's burgeoning popularity in our culture, though close studies of lesser-well known works such as 'Love and Friendship' and 'The Watsons', and familiar texts such as 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Emma', moving on to a wide-ranging exploration through all the novels, of the operation of love and the articulation of desire.