Comparative Literature Commons^™

Review Of Women Reviewing Women In Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Critical Reception Of Lane Austen, Charlotte Bronte And George Eliot, Joanne Wilkes

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The subtitle of Joanne Wilkes' elegant and meticulous monograph is somewhat misleading. Although Austen, Bronte and Eliot make regular appearances, as one would expect the three major female literary figures of the nineteenth century to do, the work does not seek to investigate their critical histories - something which Wilkes has already done in a compelling essay published in Joanne Shattock's collection Women and Literature in Britain, 1800-1900 (2001). Instead, Wilkes' attention here is firmly directed at the careers of the critics who, for the most part, remain on the margins of Victorian studies: Maria Jane Jewsbury, Sara Coleridge, Hannah …

'Hetty Had Never Read A Novel': Adam Bede And Realism, Rachel Bowlby

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is not just the famous Chapter 17, 'In Which the Story Pauses a Little’, which makes George Eliot's Adam Bede one of the first candidates for any discussion of the tenets and aims of nineteenth-century literary realism. The question is opened in the very first paragraph of the novel - so very prominently, perhaps, and in so many dimensions, that we may miss its compacted meanings as we read on or rush on, past the beginning, to enter the narrative. Much of its meaning, of course, is not immediately available without the understandings that subsequent chapters will add, including …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 22 November 2009- The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

2009 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of two works of fiction by George Eliot. As no one here could fail to know, throughout the year there have been all kinds of celebrations of her first - and wonderful- novel, Adam Bede (and the word has spread even to London of great Adam Bede happenings in these parts). On the other hand, I've heard of nothing commemorating 'The Lifted Veil', which appeared in the same year as the novel. While this strange, supernatural tale of an acutely sensitive, unproductive poet whose clairvoyance alienates him from his fellow mortals is …

Japanese Branch Report- 2009, Yohko Nagai

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Overlooking the meandering Edo River and the panoramic view of the Tokyo skyline, the thirteenth annual convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at the scenic campus of Wayo Women's University on Saturday, 28 November 2009.

After an opening remark by Mizue Aida of Nihon University, a welcome address was made by Midori Uematsu, a professor of Wayo Women's University. This year we had the privilege of listening to four papers in the morning session. The first two papers were chaired by Akiko Kimura, of Waseda University and the last two papers by Itsuyo Shimizu of Kinki …

The Art Of Conduct, The Conduct Of Art And The 'Mixed Science' Of Eliot's Ethics: ' Sympathetic Impulse' And 'The Scientific Point Of View' In The Mill On The Floss, Simon Calder

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Mill on the Floss is full of keys and clues. Most famously, Maggie Tolliver, following her father's bankruptcy, 'wanted some key that would enable her to understand and, in understanding, endure, the heavy weight that had fallen on her young heart.' 1 In chapter three of Book Four of Eliot's novel, Maggie believes herself to have found just such a key in Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ (MF, 298):

Here, then, was a secret of life that would enable her to renounce all other secrets ... [F]or the first time she saw the possibility of shifting the …

Editor's Note - 2010

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1. The articles in this issue by Dinah Birch, Rachel Bowlby, Barbara Hardy, and Josephine McDonagh were originally delivered as papers at the Adam Bede conference held at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, on 7 November 2009.

George Eliot As Historian: The Case Of Mr. Crewe And Hugh Hughes, David Paterson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Historians look for as many different sources of evidence as they can to describe and interpret the past. How far is fiction a valid source? Great fiction may reveal great truths but is this only in a general sense? George Eliot herself seems to suggest above that reliance on 'descriptions of novelists' may be a perilous route to an accurate portrait: but what about relying on descriptions of those in her own books? Despite one specific denial, some of her 'portraits of clergymen' contain valuable historical elements.

An examination of one part of Scenes of Clerical Life shows George Eliot's …

The Representation Of Place In Middlemarch, Adam Wright

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Critics in the past have tended to refer to the rootedness of characters in George Eliot's novels. This is particularly true of Adam Bede, where the naturalistic roots of characters are often explicitly stated, such as when Dinah affirms 'I'm not free to leave Snowfield, where I was first planted, and have grown deep into it, like the small grass on the hill-top'.1 Catherine Middleton, in her essay 'Roots and Rootlessness', when analysing Middlemarch refers to seven different types of roots in just four pages (,emotional', 'physical', 'moral', 'affective', 'social', 'intellectual' ,and 'local').2 These terms not only complicate our understanding …

Notes On Middlemarch And Romola, Rodney Stenning Edgecombe

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Rereading Middlemarch and Romola recently, 1 was struck by some unrecorded musical and literary parallels, none of them substantial enough (or indeed sufficiently interconnected) to be woven into an integrated article, but having, 1 hope, enough intrinsic interest to warrant my presenting them here as so many Casaubonic 'leavings' that might or might not be incorporated into future work on the author.

A Schubertian Moment in Middlemarch

George Eliot's enthusiasm for the Lieder of Schubert is attested by a letter written in October, 1859 - 'Schubert's songs, 1 especially delight in' (Letters, Ill: 178) - and our knowledge of that …

'Good Teaching': Adam Bede And Education, Dinah Birch

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's commitment to teaching motivates her writing from the first. Like many of those whose thinking was shaped by early nineteenth-century evangelicalism, she saw education as a vital responsibility. In 1847, when she was twenty-eight years old, she remarked to Sara Hennell that she thought '''Live and Teach" should be a proverb as well as "Live and Learn"'.1 Eliot's persistent interest in teaching and learning was a reason for her turning to fiction as her primary medium as a writer - not the only reason, but an important one. She had no inclination whatsoever to become a professional teacher, …

Annual Report 2009, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I am pleased to report that last year was a successful one. There are things we might have done better, or differently, but I think we can say that 2009 was marked by events which provided huge pleasure and satisfaction for our members, and for a much wider audience beyond our membership.

The AGM last year heard a request from Liz Mellor for some sabbatical time whilst she dealt with health problems and members agreed to that request. We then held a discussion about the Fellowship and what we hoped to see develop in the future. Members enjoyed the chance …

Expressive Things In Adam Bede, Barabar Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A drop of ink is the first thing in the first sentence of George Eliot's first novel: 'With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance corner farreaching visions of the past.' Like many objects in Adam Bede, this one is more complicated than first appears. In its generalized imaging of magical creation, ritual and prophesy, it is an invocation, introducing and solemnizing the other object with which it is twinned and compared, the real drop of ink at the end of the author's pen which has actually written this sorcerer's …

Review Of Daniel Deronda

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A dramatized version of Daniel Deranda scripted by John Cooper was produced by the Traffic of the Stage Company at the Upstairs at the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate in May. Directed by Harry Meacher, it had a cast of seventeen actors who between them played forty-one different parts. The audience sat on three sides of the acting area (the floor of which was patterned like a giant roulette wheel) and the actors, when not directly engaged in the action, moved to the edges of this space where they would, when appropriate (i.e., when the scene was a party or some …

Superior Domesticity: Two George Eliot Cats, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Persian cat, Hafiz, appears in two scenes in Daniel Deronda (1876) .1 The first of these appearances occurs in chapter 18, which introduces the compact, creative little Meyrick women - mother and three daughters - just as they are about to become Mirah Lapidoth's hospitable benefactresses, though she is as yet unknown to them. They are gathered harmoniously together in the evening lamp- and candle-lit, miniature double parlour of their narrow riverside house. 'All four, if they had been wax-work, might have been packed easily in a fashionable lady's travelling trunk.'2 Their corporeal diminutiveness is …

Review Of George Eliot's Intellectual Life, Avrom Fleishman

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Avrom Fleishman's study of George Eliot as a Victorian intellectual comes late in a distinguished career of scholarly publication that stretches over more than forty years. The book primarily concerns itself with some large questions: What were Eliot's central ideas and how were they modified over the course of her development? How did they overlap or differ from those of her contemporaries? In working out his answers, Fleishman creates an admiring and admirable account of 'a mighty mind' (2) interested in others' theoretical systems but always independent of them, forging its own deeply ethical and ultimately tragic versions of humanism, …

Adam Bede And Emigration, Josephine Mcdonagh

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Although emigration to settler colonies was a widespread phenomenon in mid nineteenth century Britain, it is a theme to which George Eliot appears to give very little attention. Of all the works, Adam Bede is the novel which seems especially home-bound. Characters who go abroad do so in penitence: Hetty is transported to Australia, where she dies; and Arthur goes to the East to make up for having committed 'the sort of wrong that can never be made up for' ('Epilogue'). In so far as it is discussed in the novel, migration is the chimera of the mistaken Mr. Gedge, …

The Thirty-Eighth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2009- A Loss For Words, Giles Foster

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A loss for words ... I am genuinely lost for words in my admiration of the novels but the title of today's talk is intended to dig a bit below the surface of simple enjoyment and highlight some of the differences - strengths and weaknesses - between novels and adaptations. What words alone can and can't do. What a film adaptation can achieve and omit. What a stage version can offer. And we should not forget other experiences of encountering books - a mother reading to children, a radio or audio tape reading.

A few years ago there was a …

The Return Of Logos: Language And Meaning In Hamlet, James Funk

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Revisions To Realist Representation In Far From The Madding Crowd And Heart Of Darkness., Paul Robertson Stephens

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Contents, Tom Mack, Ph.D.

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 12 Fall 2010

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Tom Mack, Ph.D.

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Tom Mack, Ph.D.

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

"Divine William" And The Master: The Influence Of Shakespeare On The Novels Of Henry James, Amy M. Green

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Henry James's most sustained commentary on Shakespeare comes in the form of an introduction to an edition of The Tempest that was published in 1907. In it, he remarks that the play is a reflection of Shakespeare "consciously tasting of the first and rarest of his gifts, that of imaged creative Expression...to show him as unresistingly aware" (1207). This praise ties unerringly back to James's praise of the artist as one who views the world through open eyes and can capture the nuance of experience. James himself worked at the craft of fiction, and writes extensively in his notebooks and …

Note On Contributors- 2009 Special Issue

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Rosemary Ashton is Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London. She is the author of acclaimed critical biographies of George Eliot (1996) and G. H. Lewes (1991). Her many publications on George Eliot include The Mill on the Floss: A Natural History (1990), and editions of Middlemarch (Penguin, 1994) and Selected Writings of George Eliot (World's Classics, 1992). Her most recent book is 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London (2006).

Beryl Gray is co-editor of the Review, the author of George Eliot and Music and of numerous articles on the novelist, and she has …

J.W. Cross Defends G.H. Lewes, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Early in 1881, John Cross, widowed after only seven months of married life, set about the task of preparing a biography of his famous wife. He faced a number of challenges. The most daunting were the various sensitivities inherent in the life story of the woman best known as George Eliot. Two events were particularly confronting: Mary Ann Evans's loss of faith in the 1840s, and Marian Evans's decision in 1854 to live with George Henry Lewes although they could not marry. For Cross, in effect George Eliot's second husband, the treatment of Lewes and her relationship with him was …

Conference Report George Eliot's Beginnings: Scenes Of Clerical Life Celebrated, Juliette Atkinson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Over three dozen people from around the United Kingdom and beyond gathered on Saturday 1 November 2008 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication, in volume form, of George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life. Barbara Hardy warmly welcomed the audience and presented the day's alluring programme. The conference promised to be both a celebration of the three short stories that marked Mary Ann Evans's fictional debut and an exploration of the personal and artistic influences that prompted her to change direction at the age of thirty-seven

Echoing the words of Eliot's famous journal entry with the title 'How George …

' Indications That I Can Touch The Hearts Of My Fellow Men': Reading Scenes Of Clerical Life From A Kleinian Psychoanalytic Perspective, Toni Griffiths

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot tentatively reflected in her journal that she might be touching the hearts of her fellow men in Scenes aj Clerical Life. In this short paper, I explore with the aid of Kleinian psychoanalytical ideas what might be involved in such a touching of the heart and attempt in the process to indicate that, despite their evident flaws, the Scenes are powerful harbingers of the later and mature works.

I have elsewhere detailed my argument that a literary text will evoke a strong emotional response in the reader in those cases where the powerful and contradictory sensations of the …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 23 November 2008- The Toast To The Immortal Memory, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I have attended several birthday luncheons over the years and I am very pleased and honoured to have been invited this year to propose the toast. The fact that this is a birthday celebration has prompted me to wonder how George Eliot herself was wont to celebrate her own birthday, and from the evidence of the letters and the journals the answer to my wondering question seems to be that she was not inclined to celebrate it at all. Indeed, she was barely inclined even to acknowledge it. There is a revealing early letter to Maria Lewis, written she claims …

Review Of George Eliot. Novelist, Lover, Wife, Brenda Maddox

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The distorted cover-image of George Eliot with a strange pen and a very small writing book. and the mind-reading at the beginning which tells us that one glance at the newborn Mary Ann, already possessed of a 'large drooping nose, long chin, prominent jaw', told her parents that 'she would find it hard to fulfil a girl's primary task - to find a husband, she would have to make her own way in life' , are not ingratiating, and there are signs that Brenda Maddox is not exactly inward with the novels, but she has done something no other scholar …