Sunday, February 28, 2021

"The art of pleasing – the art of pleasing, at least, at Kellynch Hall": Repetition as a prose version of enjambment in Jane Austen's "Persuasion"

In Jane Austen's "Persuasion", Elizabeth Elliot's widowed friend Mrs. Clay is "a clever young woman, who understood the art of pleasing – the art of pleasing, at least, at Kellynch Hall," where the Elliot family lives. The very Austenian doubling of the phrase, here realized through the dash and the addition of "at least", syntagmatically realizes in prose the paradigmatic effect of enjambment in poetry as it moves from a general "art of pleasing" without any modification to a particular case specified with a prepositional phrase. In a poem, that is, the same effect could be produced through lineation and without any repetition: "[...] the art of pleasing / at Kellynch Hall." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 February 2021)


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