The book and reading in the space of performance: the case of Jane Austen Book Club

Abstract

We propose to discuss the role of filmic narratives with the book as an object of representation in the context of the imaginary of shapes and types of knowledge, of ways of reading organization and of practices that have the book as object. Finally, we have the dialogical perspective of the works, its time, the subject readers and its context. For this project, we bring the filmic text The Jane Austen Book Club (2007), based on a book (The Jane Austen book club by Karen Joy Fowler), which focuses on personal and intimate dramas from people at different times of sharing, unfolding for six months, and that presents individual experiences which are mixed with the characters’ plots from the books of the English author. We highlight in the film, book and reading as narrative elements, characters accomplices of small dramas. In The Jane Austen Book Club, we perform an extrapolation in order to put the two moments - the performance and reading - in the practices developed by the participants of the club. They find the work of Austen in individual reading and in the performance that puts everyone in a continuous space of action and transformation. We believe, finally, that individual reading and the club meetings make it possible to think of the reception (individual reading) and performance (reading/collective analysis) in a combination that allows a constant revitalization of the work, in the case of Jane Austen.