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JASNA-Idaho April Meeting
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
7:00 p.m.
Hillcrest Branch Library, Overland and Orchard, Boise
JASNA’s 2010 Annual General Meeting in Portland focuses on Austen's novel Northanger Abbey. In preparation, Jane Austen Book Club members will be reading Northanger Abbey for the September book club meeting. The April JASNA-Idaho Region meeting will feature a presentation on Austen's Northanger Abbey and the influence that Anne Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho had on Jane's writing. Susan Durst, founder and past-Regional Coordinator of the Idaho Region, will be our featured speaker. In her presentation Susan will make a case for the brilliance of Radcliffe's novel and defend it as far more than one of the countless forgettable gothic mysteries of the day. While some critics believe that Austen's Northanger Abbey is little more than a humorous gothic melodrama, Susan contends that Austen actually pays homage to the genre and imitates--in her brilliant way and as the highest form of flattery--several of Radcliffe's plot and character elements. As we might expect, Jane does so with irony and humor.
Please attend April’s meeting and join in our discussion of Northanger Abbey.