English Language and Literature Commons^™

'A Being Apart': Sympathy And Distance In Middlemarch, Charlie Tyson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I wish to contend that Eliot in Middlemarch (1871-2) frequently tries to attenuate the sympathy that we, her readers, feel for her characters, and that this process of attenuation relies on emphasizing, rather than diminishing, forms of distance between reader and character. She checks our sympathies through techniques of visual staging that press her characters farther away from us in our imagined fields of vision, and through philosophical commentary that emphasizes the commonplace nature of the yearnings and sufferings these characters experience, instead of allowing us to see those circumstances as highly particularized. Despite the standard moral-philosophical observation that sympathy …

Felix Holt And 'A Fine Sight Of Lawsuits', Sheila Woolfe

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

During the festivities surrounding the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, much was said about his Warwickshire roots, and commentators noted, not for the first time, his use of Warwickshire dialect. The same is frequently said about George Eliot, of course. A good example occurs early in Felix Holt, in the coachman's words as he takes passengers up the hill past the village of Little Treby:

How many times in the year, as the coach rolled past the neglected-looking lodges which interrupted the screen of trees, and showed the river winding through a finely-timbered park, had the coachman answered the same …

Review Of Victorians Undone: Tales Of The Flesh In The Age Of Decorum, Kathryn Hughes

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is a superb book, written with deep scholarship by one of our leading biographers, which breaks new ground in its attention to the physicality of its subjects. In her introduction Kathryn Hughes says that she has felt 'chronically short-changed by the lack of physical detail in biography'. This book, she says, is 'an experiment to see what new stories emerge when you use biography .... to put mouths, bellies and beards back into the nineteenth century' by introducing 'a certain lumpiness to canonical life narratives that have previously been rendered as smooth, symmetrical, and as strangely unconvincing as a …

Review Of Victorian Narratives Of The Recent Past: Memory, History, Fiction, Helen Kingstone

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The nineteenth century saw a number of ways in which amateurs and professional historians and novelists approached the presentation of history, especially histories of the recent past. Eminent, professional historians at universities, and those aspiring to join them, increasingly avoided commenting on periods within living memory on the grounds that one could quickly lose credibility debating subjects not yet fully digested. Kingstone clearly illustrates the point in chapter 9, Conclusions: writing 'both before and after the United Kingdom's 2016 referendum decision to leave the European Union, I am aware that any arc I try to draw, any judgment I try …

Japanese Branch Report, Masako Kimura

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On 10 December 2016, the Twentieth Annual Convention of The George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held in Otani University. The morning session, moderated by Hiroshi Oshima (Hyogo University of Teacher Education), began with an opening address by Yoriko Murase (Otani University). Thereafter, two papers were presented. The first paper 'The Influence of Adam Smith's Discussion of Sympathy on George Eliot: Reading Si/as Marner with The Theory of Moral Sentiments' was read by Chiyo Fujiwara (Kobe College). The second paper 'Women's Education inAdam Bede' was read by Chiyuki Kanamaru (Aichi Bunkyo University).

Review Of The World Of Mr Casaubon: Britain's War Of Mythography, Colin Kidd

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The title of this book is interesting, as the subtitle describes what it is about but the main title refers to a fictional character from Middlemarch, part of a novel recently voted the greatest in English. Such a title makes the book much more marketable to a general audience and more likely to be reviewed in some of the broadsheets than a title which indicates that this is a book that 'venture[s] into the thickets of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antiquarianism' (vi). But the downside of the more appealing title is that readers who expect Middlemarch to play a central role …

Review Of The Transferred Life Of George Eliot: The Biography Of A Novelist, Philip Davis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

There have been several good new biographies of George Eliot in recent years but none quite like this. Davis's subtle and searching analysis focuses almost exclusively on the writing as he traces the complex ways in which the experience of Mary Ann, or later Marian, Evans is 'transferred', to use the term of his title, into the creation of George Eliot and her work. The first life of relative failure, unhappiness and unsuccessful relationships is transformed into a second life as George Eliot, successful novelist and woman of letters, and this closely written and argued study explores the relationship between …

In Memoriam, Kathleen Adams (1929-2016), John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The sheer number of years, forty, that Kathleen Adams was Secretary of the George Eliot Fellowship, is extraordinary, but that number does not do justice to the prodigious amount of time, energy and dedication that she devoted to the job.

Like many others, Kathleen came to George Eliot via her life rather than her works. As a grammar school girl from Barrs Hill in Coventry she had heard about Eliot; as an adult she learned details of her extraordinary life. That took her to the novels and then a commitment to tell people about them which was to dominate her …

Kathleen Adams: A Tribute, Gabriel Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

All but 50 years we knew each other. And I think George Eliot owes Kathleen Adams a lot. This is common knowledge - for where would the Fellowship be without her tireless efforts. Westminster Abbey, the Nuneaton statue, membership numbers: these are all well known. But that small terrace house in Stepping Stones Road, Coventry, visited by so many important figures, represents for me the championing of the ordinary folk and their appreciation of George Eliot's work. I remember an American academic being disappointed at the Newsletter Kathleen prepared so diligently, and how it was not on the intellectual level …

Review Of Writing The Stage Coach Nation: Locality On The Move In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Ruth Livesey

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Starting from the observation that so many of the major Victorian novels are set, not in the railway age in which they were written, but in the horse-drawn world of the previous generation, a world that is 'just past', this fine study explores the ways in which novelists from Waiter Scott to Thomas Hardy use the stage coach to connect particular localities, often closely observed and substantially realized, to the larger framework of the nation. This turning back to the past is not, Ruth Livesey insists, a retreat from the complications and dislocations of a modern present into a simpler …

Living With George Eliot: A Tribute To My Parents, Will Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It was a strange but much-appreciated honour to be asked to address the annual George Eliot Fellowship lunch in 2016. It was strange because I'd attended many such events long ago - fewer more recently - and had always sat with the 'rank and file' on the lower tables while Mum and Dad, officers and distinguished guests occupied the top table. So, when on Sunday 20 November, I rose to speak, I was quite miffed to find that there was no top table! All very egalitarian, but it left me wandering up and down the floor as I imparted my …

Radical Politics In The 1860s: The Writing Of Felix Holt, David Paterson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

While Felix Halt the Radical was being written there was a transformation in the atmosphere surrounding further parliamentary reform in Britain. In March 1865, when George Eliot began the novel, the Liberal Prime Minister Palmerston remained cautious about an extension of the franchise. Yet Felix Holt was finished on 31 May 1866 amidst great political excitement: a Reform Bill was being debated and the outcome uncertain. This change in emphasis in the political mood had its effect on Eliot 's writing, since the 'reform campaign had not gained enough momentum' I to explain Eliot's initial choice of subject. To say …

Chairman's Annual Report For 2016, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The most noteworthy events of 2016 were the deaths of Bill and Kathleen Adams, a couple whose extraordinary dedication and hard work from 1968 until 2008 enabled the Fellowship to prosper and become a genuinely influential literary society. Bill was the first to die, just a couple of days after laying the wreath for us in June in Nuneaton, an event he loved, and where he met and chatted to so many old friends.

The AGM in March saw the existing team of Council members renewing their positions, with a request from Hon. Treasurer Jill Bridgewater that we should find …

When Howard Met George: A Play In Two Acts, Susan Ryley Hoyle

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Dramatis Personae (in order of appearance)

Marian Evans (Mrs. Lewes) (George Eliot) (left) was born near Nuneaton in 1819 to a prosperous land agent and his (second) wife. She has lost whatever regional accent she may have had, and has often been complimented on her melodious voice. She speaks quite slowly, rarely with emphasis, nearly always with a shy earnestness and a dry sense of humour. At the time of this play, only her husband and (very recently) her publisher know that she is 'George Eliot', the author of the huge best-seller Adam Bede (1859), and of the only …

Tl;Dr - Communicating In The Age Of Social Media, Julia L. Czekaj

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

This thesis uses a literature review and post analyzation to explore Facebook and Twitter as methods of communicating. This thesis examines social media history, genre, and rhetorical aspects.

A Merrier World:' Small Renaissances Engendered In J. R. R. Tolkien's Legendarium, Dominic Dicarlo Meo

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

After surviving the trenches of World War I when many of his friends did not, Tolkien continued as the rest of the world did: moving, growing, and developing, putting the darkness of war behind. He had children, taught at the collegiate level, wrote, researched. Then another Great War knocked on the global door. His sons marched off, and Britain was again consumed. The "War to End All Wars" was repeating itself and nothing was for certain. In such extended dark times, J. R. R. Tolkien drew on what he knew-language, philology, myth, and human rights-peering back in history to the …

Surface Reading The Upside Down Chandelier: Interface “Mastery” And Feminism, Kathi Inman Berens

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay compares the literary interfaces of one artwork, The Upside Down Chandelier [UDC], in two settings: a large-scale installation taking up a gallery room, and in a browser window. UDC is a generative, multimedia artwork authored in Flash by four women electronic literature artists using four spoken languages. It uses the same code base for both settings. The installation’s embodied and site-specific context at the gallery created multiple vantages from which to “read” the work’s design and purpose. In browser, UDC’s words are the only point of access. The reader’s urge to decode the words in …

The Sociocultural Perception Of The African American Woman's Bodily Aesthetics: Investigated In The Works Venus, God Don't Like Ugly, And Their Eyes Were Watching God, Andrene Loiten

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Despite contemporary movements towards tolerance and appreciation of differing cultural entities within the United States, the normative standard of beauty serves as a pinnacle of division amongst women. The normative standard of beauty—implemented by the dominant race within the States—encourages discrimination in regards to the perception of African American female beauty. Although information exists identifying the original influence pertaining to the negative perception of African American female beauty, the reason for its continued perpetuation within the African American community remains ill defined. Effects of this standard amongst African Americans are psychological and physiological. The destruction of self-image and appreciation for …

Walking And Wandering: Reconstructing Diasporic Subjectivity In T. C. Huo's Land Of Smiles And Lê Thi Diem Thúy’S The Gangster We Are All Looking For, Brian G. Chen

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Diaspora has often been defined as the condition of dispersal and displacement in which its members express minimal connections with their host country and always look to return to their ancestral homelands. However, from the literary representations in T. C. Huo’s Land of Smiles and Lê Thi Diem Thúy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For, it is clear that members of the Southeast Asian diaspora determine to set root in their host country and refuse to be treated as temporary guests. This determination is warranted by their desire to redefine the contentious idea of home beyond cultural ancestry …

An Examination Of Relational Bullying In Award Winning Newbery Books, 1996-2016, Kaysey N. Wann

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Relational bullying, although covert in nature and difficult for adults to notice and identify, is becoming increasingly prevalent among young children and teens. The success of bibliotherapy as preventative and intervention practices for bullying shows that portrayals of relational bullying in quality children’s literature would be effective in reducing and preventing it. However, relational bullying is rarely portrayed in children’s literature. My goal was to find quality children’s realistic fiction literature that portrays relational bullying in Newbery award-winning books, and to bring them to the attention of teachers.

After creating a table to determine what types of bullying, if any, …