UCLA Professor Charles Batten delivers talk on Jane Austen’s novels
UCLA Professor Charles Lynn Batten will celebrate the classic novels of Jane Austen by leading a discussion of her works at The Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel.
Beverly Hills Literary Escape
Today – Sunday
The Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel
By Caitlin Scofield
Oct. 22, 2010 1:05 a.m.
Jane Austen will be revived this weekend.
UCLA English professor Charles Lynn Batten said that he is both honored and delighted to be speaking at the annual Beverly Hills Literary Escape, which will be taking place today through Sunday at various locations including the Saban Theatre.
He will give the lecture regarding how “Everything he learned in life, he learned from Jane Austen” during the Penguin Classics Tea event, which will be held at The Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel this Saturday. The event is open to the public, and throughout the whole weekend will feature speakers of award-winning novels such as Aimee Bender, Karen Essex and Gail Tsukiyama.
The Beverly Hills Literary Escape will give readers the opportunity to enjoy and listen to lectures by some of their favorite award-winning authors. The event is an opportunity to listen to and experience a book through the author’s point of view. According to Batten, he is speaking on the behalf of Jane Austen, who died in 1817 at the age of 41. Batten will combine all six of Austen’s novels: “Sense and Sensibility,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Mansfield Park,” “Emma,” “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion” into a single lecture presentation.
“Most serious readers nowadays, and especially serious readers who find their way into a book club, feel the need of reading certain contemporary authors … and dead authors. I’m really sort of Jane Austen’s surrogate,” Batten said.
According to Batten, Austen is a very well-known author who many readers can identify with because of the life situations and issues she covers in her novels.
“There are many virtues to Jane Austen, but the real virtue to Jane Austen is she understands human nature, and I’m going to say every character in a Jane Austen novel if you think long and hard appears in your life,” said Batten.
Zoe Rose Buonaiuto, a fourth-year history and French student took the fiat lux “Social World of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility” in the winter of 2010 with history professor Teofilo Ruiz.
According to Buonaiuto, students aren’t exposed to Austen as much as they should be, but this event is an opportunity for the campus community to learn about Austen in a convenient setting.
“I think the main thing I learned to appreciate about Austen from Teofilo was the way that you can connect with the characters in Austen’s novels. And for me specifically, I can really connect with the characters in “˜Sense and Sensibility.’ So although she was writing in the early 19th century, her stories, her characters and her personalities are all ones you can connect with in the 21st century,” Buonaiuto said.
According to Ruiz, Austen’s ability to put words together creatively allows her novels to identify with the lives of readers around the world.
“She is a person who writes with a beautiful style. It’s not exaggerated ““ it captures real speech. So it’s not forced, it’s very natural,” Ruiz said. “It is always remarkable that a woman this age has such powerful insights. We have a lot to learn from her in a sense.”
Ruiz, in referring to Batten’s lecture, said that while not everything in life can be learned from Austen because of the various life circumstances we encounter, Austen’s characters resemble a social class that still exists in our society today.
