An important step in extending the traditional analysis of individual rational choice is to incorporate into the theory a much richer class of attitudes, preferences, and calculations.
attitudes preferences and calculations should be added to the analysis
It is rather unclear what the purpose of the paper is as the author continues to discuss or mention other sources' viewpoints about the problem and not his own. There is basically no argument whatsoever in the article.
The solution is to focus not onwhois greatenough to exert influence, or strong enough to grapple with the‘‘anxiety’’oftheir literary inheritance, but rather onhowinfluence operates. What we canlook to, then, are instances of‘‘misreading’’,‘‘misinterpretation’’,‘‘carica-ture’’,‘‘distortion’’and‘‘wilful revisionism’’for what they reveal. Austen isnot the only writer whose works must benefit from such an analysis, but she,perhaps more than any other writer, unrelentingly demands it of her readers.Austen insists that her readers follow her in deliberately, playfully misreadingand reconceiving a broad range of literature, both‘‘high’’and‘‘low’’.Mimicking her misprision in our response to Romantic theories of influence,we can at last recognize how such influence operates on writers whom thecanon ignores or marginalizes: women and novelists, certainly, but alsothose whose influential moment was fleeting, rather than historicallytranscendent
This seems like the article's thesis to me. Here, the author argues that we should not seek to identify which authors/works are seemingly "worthy" of having an influence on other authors/works. Rather, we should explore on how literary influence is actually functioning in related works.Readers must look to different methods of influence, such as "distortion" and "misinterpretation" in their study of the topic. In the demands that she places upon her readers to be well-informed and attentive, Austen invites us to be a part of a complicated and ongoing literary conversation. Additionally, through studying Austen's works, we can observe the influence of those traditionally left out by the canon.
This argument does seem relevant and original to me. In my admittedly brief study of literary influence, the discussion is usually exclusively related to the canon. Murphy asks us to consider influence in a broader sense. However, the main question that I have after reading this article relates to computational literary study. Franco Moretti, Matthew Jockers, and other such scholars have made significant strides in the application of computational tools in the study of literary influence. I am very curious as to how this article's premises and main argument would hold up when subjected to such tools. This seems like a weakness to me. Even after my brief study of computational literary analysis, it seems that any conversation of literary influence is incomplete without actually looking at the data.