In July 2017, some American scholars accused alt-right groups of appropriating Jane Austen’s works for extreme-right propaganda. How could Austen’s texts – an author associated with the beginnings of feminism – be used by blatant misogynists? This clash of perceptions reveals a dispute between Austen’s broad reception as classically romantic romances and a whole range of narrow theoretical academic readings. In the analysis of this dispute, the paper outlines long-lasting threads of Austen’s interpretation in AngloAmerican culture, whose ideological reconstruction of the last few decades clashes with a nostalgia for imperial order.
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