{"id":2474,"date":"2013-04-24T09:22:44","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T13:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=2474"},"modified":"2013-04-24T09:23:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T13:23:51","slug":"criticism-of-jane-austen-game-theorist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2013\/04\/24\/criticism-of-jane-austen-game-theorist\/","title":{"rendered":"Criticism of &#8216;Jane Austen, Game Theorist&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Relating to CC202&#8217;s study of Jane Austen&#8217;s work is an article from\u00a0<em>Slate<\/em>, in which Adelle Waldman gives her amusing criticism of a recent book that discusses Austen&#8217;s insight into human behavior. Here is an extract:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Austen, it seems, has something to tell us. And not only us English majors. Mathematicians. Game theorists. Serious thinkers. Even Henry Kissinger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<blockquote><p>That\u2019s all according to a new book called\u00a0<em>Jane Austen, Game Theorist<\/em>, by Michael Chwe, an associate professor of political science at UCLA. According to the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em> piece, Chwe watched the movie\u00a0<em>Clueless<\/em>, an adaptation of Austen\u2019s\u00a0<em>Emma<\/em>, and realized that\u00a0Austen had some insight into human behavior.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nBut Jane Austen doesn\u2019t need vindication from social science. Or math. Let alone from Henry Kissinger. And these kinds of arguments often flatten both art and science, reducing the insights of each to simple platitudes.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nI don\u2019t want to judge Chwe\u2019s explication of Austen without having read it. It seems perfectly plausible to me that people who are interested in manipulation and persuasion in the real world could tease out useful lessons from a writer as shrewd as Austen. But what we shouldn\u2019t do is treat Austen\u2019s supposed utility\u2014to serious experts!\u2014as a validation of her art.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Of course the tendency to implicitly deprecate fiction in favor of \u201charder\u201d writing is nothing new. \u201cThere seems,\u201d Austen wrote in\u00a0<em>Northanger Abbey<\/em>, \u201ca general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labor of the novelist, and of slighting performances which have only genius, wit and taste to recommend them.\u201d Now those are prescient words.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>For the full article, visit\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/slate.me\/ZqjgZk\">slate.me\/ZqjgZk<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Relating to CC202&#8217;s study of Jane Austen&#8217;s work is an article from\u00a0Slate, in which Adelle Waldman gives her amusing criticism of a recent book that discusses Austen&#8217;s insight into human behavior. Here is an extract: Austen, it seems, has something to tell us. And not only us English majors. Mathematicians. Game theorists. Serious thinkers. Even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3740,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[898,477,3857,2534,4261],"tags":[6388,44848,6593,28519,5216,48314,37480,48313,1519,2100,1735],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3740"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2474"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474\/revisions\/2476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}