"At first sight, his address is certainly not striking and his person can hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which are uncommonly good, and the general sweetness of his countenance perceived." This passage in which Elinor describes the qualities of Edward Ferrars illustrates the fine line that Jane Austen walks between Neo-classicism and Romanticism. Her subject to whom much emotion is devoted is an archetypal Romantic subject, yet Austen's syntax, choice of words, and the manner in which it is written embrace the Neo-classical method of writing.
             The Neoclassical movement embodied a group of attitudes toward art and human existence. They were ideals of order, logic, restraint, correctness, and which would enable the practitioners of various arts to imitate or reproduce the structures and themes of Greek or Roman origin. Neoclassicism dominated English literature from the Restoration in 1660 until the end of the eighteenth century, when the publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798) by Wordsworth and Coleridge marked the full emergence of Romanticism. Up to a point, Neoclassicism rejected the views of optimism, enthusiasm, and excitement of the Renaissance period. Neoclassicism also represented a reaction to the Renaissance view that, fundamentally, the man was good with an abundance of potential for spiritual and intellectual development. By contrast, Neoclassicism theorists saw man as an imperfect being, inherently sinful, whose potential was limited. They replaced the Renaissance emphasis on the imagination, on invention and experimentation, and mysticism with a focus on order and reason, on restraint, on common sense, and on religious, political, economic and philosophical conservatism. They maintained that man himself was the most appropriate subject of art and saw art itself as essentially pragmatic--as valuable because it was somehow useful--and as something, which was properly intellectual rather than emo...