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영어

According to some cognitive literary theorists, Austen was particularly innovative in analyzing how her characters follow the workings of each other’s minds, as Anne in Persuasion is capable of considering five levels of meta-knowledge. In advancing this view, this essay examines that this novel’s moral outlook is as much a question of form as of content, and that language—especially its formal dimension of word arrangement and sentence structure of the text─is the bearer of moral content. This paper also suggests Persuasion’s meaning is not exhausted by mind-reading involving a primary capacity for reading pre-existing mental states. In addition to individualistic mind-reading, Austen’s text represents interpersonal mind-shaping practice, wherein characters come to form their minds in ordinary interpersonal relationships.