From the late twentieth century on, the adaptation of Jane Austen’s literature has experienced an enormous revival in the form of the newly launched chick lit genre, which was sparked by the publication of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary in 1996 and has been flourishing ever since. This critical analysis of the use of Austen in contemporary Anglophone literature examines whether the utilisation of the Regency author’s legacy by present-day writers of chick lit justifies bestowing upon her the dubious title of ‘the mother of chick lit’.
Following a short survey of Austen’s life and literature and the development of the chick lit genre, this study provides an in-depth comparative analysis of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion as well as Fielding’s two Bridget Jones-novels: In an attempt to assert that Fielding’s farcically inept heroine – instead of making her a rightful heir to her Regency predecessors – rather exemplifies a modern-day caricature on a par with Austen’s fools, Bridget Jones is labelled an ‘Austenean fool’. The study closes with an assessment of a variety of chick lit novels in order to identify discernible patterns and social behaviours and provides a general outlook on the future of chick lit: While Austen is still a favourite with readers nearly two full centuries after her death, the question remains to be answered whether readers in another 200 years are likely to revisit today’s chick lit novels with the same delight or whether the chick lit phenomenon will fade from the cultural consciousness like so many other ephemeral fashions before it.

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