Comparative Literature Commons^™

Review Of The Ladislaw Case, Inke Thormahlen

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

We live in an age of prequels and sequels either in book form or in television serials, with nineteenth-century novelists providing the majority of the material for contemporary writers to develop or elaborate. It was perhaps only a matter of time before one of George Eliot's novels was to form the basis for such treatment. In this case the novel is probably her greatest, Middlemarch, and the sequel, The Ladislaw Case, is the first major work of a young Swedish graduate of Lund University, Imke Thormahlen.

Twelve years after the conclusion of Middlemarch, Will Ladislaw, now married to Dorothea (Brooke, …

George Eliot, Scientific Materialism And Literary Form: Some Relfections On Felicia Bonaparte's Will And Destiny, K.M. Newton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Felicia Bonaparte's study of Eliot's fiction, Will and Destiny: Morality and Tragedy in George Eliot's Novels, was published in 1975. I read it rather quickly towards the end of the 1970s because at the time I was working on a study of Eliot of my own and inevitably my attention was somewhat focused on whether there was going to be any overlap with my book. Since Bonaparte's book argued strongly that Eliot was intellectually committed to empiricism and scientific rationality and mine attempted to bring out her relation to aspects …

Speculation And The Emotional Economy Of 'Mansfield Park', Laura Vorachek

English Faculty Publications

At the midpoint of Mansfield Park (1814), the Bertram family dines at the Parsonage, and card games make up the after dinner entertainment. The characters form two groups, with Sir Thomas, Mrs. Norris, and Mr. and Mrs. Grant playing Whist, while Lady Bertram, Fanny, William, Edmund, and Henry and Mary Crawford play Speculation, This scene is central not only because Speculation reveals certain characters' personalities, but also because another type of “speculation” occurs during the game as the players contemplate or conjecture about one another. Moreover, “speculation” in the sense of gambling functions as a metaphor for the vicissitudes of …

The Journey Narrative: The Trope Of Women's Mobility And Travel In Contemporary Arab Women's Literary Narratives, Banan Al-Daraiseh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the trope of women's journey and the various kinds of movement and travel it includes employed and represented by three contemporary Arab women literary writers, Ghada Samman, Ahdaf Soueif, and Leila Aboulela in their literary narratives as well as travelogue in the case of Samman. The primary texts analyzed in this study are Samman's Beirut 75 and The Body Is a Traveling Suitcase, Soueif's In the Eye of the Sun, and Aboulela's The Translator and Minaret. These texts demonstrate how the journey trope becomes a fresh narrative strategy used by Arab women writers that …

Rachilde, Marguerite Eymery Vallette (1860-1953), Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

This is a biographical overview of the life and principle works of the French author Rachilde, a.k.a. Marguerite Eymery Vallette (1860-1953), one of the few women writers working in the masculinist field of fin-de-siecle or decadent fiction.

Knowing Too Much: The Burden Of Omniscience In The Lifted Veil, Melissa Raines

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In the spring of 1859, not long after the success of her first novel, Adam Bede, George Eliot submitted a much shorter work to her publisher, John Blackwood, for his consideration. Blackwood's eventual letter in response to the piece arrived more than a fortnight later and had to be prompted by Eliot's partner, George Henry Lewes. Perhaps Blackwood's belated reply was somewhat understandable: he must initially have been thrilled by the prospect of another submission from the rising new author, but the strangeness of this undeniably macabre new tale unsettled him. A story of supernatural power and science that pushed …

Review Of Dorothea's Daughter And Other Nineteenth-Century Postscripts, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This book is the fruit of many years of thought about nine great novels. Barbara Hardy does not present us with a series of sequels, though we do learn of things that happened after the action of the novels ended. Rather, she offers a set of conversations in which two (or, in some cases, three) characters from each novel reflect on the past. This formula allows her to focus on aspects of the stories that intrigue her, or that frustrate her wish to have a full understanding of fictional people who, it is clear, move and interest her as much …

Review Of The Life Of George Eliot: A Critical Biography, Nancy Henry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The literary biographer's most difficult task is to find plausible, sophisticated ways of connecting a human life with the art that emerges from it. In the case of a major imaginative artist like George Eliot, the accumulated weight of previous biographies and critical studies only makes that task more challenging. Nancy Henry confronts this situation head-on in The Life of George Eliot. Her book is not just another re-telling of the familiar narrative, written as if it were starting anew. Instead, Henry has grappled with what a genuinely 'critical biography' might mean on a number of different levels. She interrogates …

Review Of George Eliot: Interviews And Recollections, K.K. Collins

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In his introduction to this fascinating collection of accounts and comments by those who met George Eliot, K. K. Collins points out that modem biographies draw on about forty recollections that have come to form a canon of reminiscence. To this canon his volume adds a large number of unfamiliar sources, arranging more than two hundred items in sections which follow the chronology of her career, with subdivisions for the years of her fame under headings such as 'Sunday Gatherings at the Priory' and 'Eton, Cambridge and Oxford', and with full and helpful annotation of names and details. Of the …

Review Of The Art Of Comparison: How Novels And Critics Compare, Catherine Brown

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This book is a defence of comparative literature in theory - if it has a theory - and in practice by concentrating on three novels - Daniel Deronda, Anna Karenina, Women in Love - which are structurally similar in various respects, most obviously in employing double plots focusing on two couples, and thematically related in terms of their interests and concerns. The book is clearly derived from a doctoral dissertation and has some obvious features of the genre: a thesis which it endeavours to make persuasive by argument and supporting evidence, reference to much previous criticism on the subject, a …

Review Of Modernizing George Eliot: The Miter As Artist, Intellectual, Proto-Modernist, Cultural Critic, K.M. Newton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This distinguished work by a major Eliot scholar is the product of decades of reading, writing and reflection on her fiction and thought. It brings together in revised, homogenized form a series of essays from 1972 to the present day, including new material; and further, it engages with and amplifies two of Newton's earlier monographs on Eliot, as well as his collection of essays by other critics on Eliot utilizing modem literary theory. Despite dealing with complex philosophical ideas, Newton's writing is clear and lucid throughout, bringing to light new insights without the unnecessary jargon that occasionally taints modem criticism. …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship- 2012 No. 43, Beryl Gray, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors .............................................................. 5

ARTICLES Josh Moats: Deronda and the Tigress: Buddhism, Compassion, and National Consciousness in Daniel Deronda (Prize Essay)....................................................... 7

Joanne Shattock: Models of Authorship: Margaret Oliphant and George Eliot...................18

Marianne Burton: 'There is no such thing as natural barrenness in natural women': Childless Marriages in Silas Marner and The Lifted Veil..................... 31

Melissa Raines: Knowing Too Much: The Burden of Consciousness in the Lifted Veil ........................................................................................... 39

Andrew Lallier: 'The generations of ants and beavers': Classical Economics and Animals in The Mill on the Floss................................................................. .4 7

Peter A. Brier: From George Eliot to her …

Review Of Landscape And Gender In The Novels Of Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, And Thomas Hardy: The Body Of Nature, Eithne Henson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

At the heart of Eithne Henson's book is a comment made by George Eliot when she reviewed Ruskin's Lectures on Architecture and Painting in 1854: 'To a certain degree, all artistic interpretation of Nature is conventional' (p. 75). Henson's concern is with the precise nature of the conventions on which Victorian novelists were able to draw in their representations of landscape, and the extent to which those conventions were gendered. But Henson also asks: who is looking? From what position or perspective? The result is a rich study of what we might call the 'painterly' eye of Victorian narrative. Henson …

Review Of The Business Of The Novel: Economics, Aesthetics And The Case Of Middlemarch., Simon R. Frost

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

With excellent research available on the publication history of Middlemarch, including work by John Sutherland, N. N. Feltes, Carol Martin, David Finkelstein and others, it may seem surprising that an entire book has now been devoted to the topic. But as the title of Simon R. Frost's The Business of the Novel: Economics, Aesthetics and the Case of Middlemarch suggests, this book takes Middlemarch as a case study to illustrate and test some larger theoretical claims and methodological practices. In his introduction, Frost admits that most of the material on Middlemarch has been covered by other critics, but that he …

Review Of Silas Marner On Bbc Radio 4

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Unheralded in the Radio Times and elsewhere, Silas Mamer, dramatized by Richard Cameron, was broadcast as the Classic Serial on Radio 4 in two one-hour instalments on 16 and 23 October 2011. I was pleased that I spotted it. George Eliot has been favourably treated on radio and television, especially in the past twenty years or so. We've had televised versions of Silas Mamer, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, The Lifted Veil and Daniel Deronda have all been serialized on the radio. Radio 7 recently repeated a broadcast of Silas Mamer with the late …

Deronda And The Tigress: Buddhism, Compassion, And National Consciousness In George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, Josh Moats

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Many scholars have written about George Eliot's treatment of Judaism in Daniel Deronda (hereafter DD), but no one has yet explored why George Eliot includes Buddhism in the novel. Eliot engages with Buddhism most explicitly in chapter thirty-seven when Mirah compares Deronda to the Buddha: 'Mr Hans said yesterday that you thought so much of others you hardly wanted anything for yourself. He told us a wonderful story of Bouddha giving himself to the famished tigress to save her and her little ones from starving. And he said you were like Bouddha. That is what we all imagine of you' …

Chairman's Annual Report 2011, Jphn Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It was a good year for the Fellowship. Our membership numbers held their own, and although some older members have difficulty getting to events, we have attracted new members who have been enthusiastic in their support.

The theme for the year was Silas Mamer, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2011. The first event of the year was the AGM, which we had hoped to expand with a keynote lecture to start the year by Barbara Hardy. Unfortunately, Barbara had to cancel due to ill-health but undaunted, we arranged a review of the previous year and had useful discussions about …

From George Eliot To Her 'Rabbi': An Epistolary Find, Peter A. Brier

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I cannot be easy without writing a word or two this morning for I am conscious that I made myself more disagreeable than nature obliges me to be by my hard quips to you. They were not warrantable by anything but a strong personal and impersonal interest in that sensitive being of yours, which holds what may be very precious things in its keeping. And even with that warrant it will be a proof of your fondness if you quite forgive me.

You look wretched - and I have now so much of that subtle misery which can be explained …

'There Is No Such Thing As Natural Barrenness In Natural Women': Childless Marriages In Silas Marner And The Lifted Veil., Marianne Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'There is no such thing as natural barrenness in natural women' wrote the eminent French psychologist Eugene Becklard in the 1840s, and, in general, physicians agreed with him. Certainly in mid-nineteenth-century literature children were the sine qua non of a successful marriage; courtship novels rarely ended at the altar, happy endings demanded babies. Unlike lady novelists who wrote silly novels, George Eliot thought marriage, with its complications, compromises, and lack of easy exits, was quite as interesting as courtship, and childless marriages were generally more interesting than generative ones. The two childless marriages' in Silas Mamer and The Lifted Veil …

'The Generations Of Ant And Beavers': Classical Economics And Animals In The Mill On The Floss, Andrew Lallier

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Before any named characters find their way into The Mill on the Floss, the narrator introduces us to two sets of animals (aside from a human driver): white ducks dipping their heads into the stream and horses pulling a covered wagon. The ducks are characterized as being 'unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world above' (24). This characterization serves a comic purpose, indicating a disparity between the mentality of the unreflective animals and the implicit judgement of the narrator's gaze. By contrast, the horses seem to possess a surprisingly developed interiority (however conditioned by the narrator's …

Models Of Authorship: Margaret Oliphant And George Eliot, Joanne Shattock

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This article is about the profession of authorship in the nineteenth century. More specifically it is about the writing lives of two women novelists. Margaret Oliphant's (1828-1897) work is unfamiliar to most modem readers, apart from her Autobiography, one or two of her supernatural tales, and possibly the 'Chronicles of Carlingford', the series for which she was best known, novels and stories set in an English provincial town where life revolves around church and chapel. George Eliot (1819-1880) on the other hand, needs no introduction to today's readers.

In one of her many reviews of the works of her contemporaries, …

Review Of Women And Personal Property In The Victorian Novel, Deborah Wynne

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Dorothea Brooke was reluctant to accept the bequest of her mother's jewellery, but was George Eliot equally resistant to the allure of pretty things? Deborah Wynne thinks not. Wynne cites a letter from Eliot to her friend Elma Stuart in which the energizing pleasure of 'little joys' is a cause for celebration:

it is cheering to think that there are blue clocks as well as troubles in the world. There is another spiritual daughter of mine whom I should gladly see eager about some small delight - a china monster or a silver clasp - instead of telling me that …

Japanese Branch Report - 2011, Mizue Aida

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday 3 December 2011, the Fifteenth Annual Convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Ferris University.

The morning session began with an opening address by Hidetada Mukai (Ferris University). Three papers were presented in the morning: the first two were introduced and commented upon by Hiroshi Ikezono (Yamaguchi University) and the third by Mie Abe (Shoin University).

The first paper 'Sensitivity and Materiality in "The Lifted Veil'" was presented by Mari Takumi (Tokyo University). She focused on Latimer and his supernatural ability to look into the minds of others and see the reality through his …

Review Of George Eliot, European Novelist, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On the opening page of this series of connected essays, John Rignall points out that 'George Eliot's readers and reviewers took it for granted that her novels belonged to a European tradition of fiction'. When Leavis conscripted her into his new canon after the Second World War, this dimension of her work was largely erased and has only recently begun to re-emerge thanks to the work of Rosemary Ashton, Elinor Shaffer and others - not least John Rignall himself. One reason for this neglect was no doubt intrinsic to the work: Rignall concedes that George Eliot's fictions are set overwhelmingly …

Postmodern Subjects And The Nation: Contemporary Arab Women Writers' Reconfigurations Of Home And Belonging, Ghadir Khalil Zannoun

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A lot has been said about the declining status of national paradigms. Most recently, the forces of change have been located in the transnational and global phenomenon. Contemporary Arabic literature, however, identifies globalism as only one among many factors undermining the existing national formations in the Arab countries. Among these factors is the postcolonial condition, and in the case of Palestine, the struggle against the continuing military occupation of Palestinian lands, wholesale and unsystematized modernization, and complex internal Social, cultural, religious and racial differences exacerbated by neo-colonialism. The contemporary Arab women writers' fiction analyzed in this dissertation posits yet another …

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Review Of Victorian Biography

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

No abstract provided.

From Larva To Butterfly: Sophia In Ding Ling’S Miss Sophia’S Diary And Coco In Wei Hui’S Shanghai Baby, Xiaoqing Liu

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Sophia and Coco are two characters in Ding Ling's Miss Sophia's Diary (1928/1995) and Wei Hui's Shanghai Baby (1999), respectively. Like a larva, Sophia, who enters society in the early twentieth century, is weak and immobile. Coco, who lives at the end of the twentieth century, is like a butterfly leading an outlandish lifestyle. The differences between Sophia and Coco reflect the achievement of official feminism, which liberated Chinese women from traditional patriarchal control in the social sense. However, gender issues for women remain unresolved. To fight against traditional patriarchy and especially challenge gender oppression in official feminism, both Sophia …

Review Of Daniel Deronda, Alain Jumeau

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Alain Jumeau's new French translation! of Daniel Deronda is the first since Ernest David's in 1881,1882 and 1886, no longer easily accessible. Jumeau is an excellent George Eliot scholar as well as an experienced translator - his translations include The Mill on the Floss and The Way We Live Now - and he has produced a graceful and fluent translation with preface and notes, introducing the great Victorian novel, so radically experimental in psychology and narrative form, to a new Francophone readership."

Whether Jumeau is aware of translation theory or not, his version exemplifies the chief processes of translation technically …