Comparative Literature Commons^™

Review Of The Complete Shorter Poetry Of George Eliot, Antonie Gerard Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is the first fully edited and annotated edition of George Eliot's poems to appear in print. 'Shorter' means all the poems except The Spanish Gypsy, which is to appear in a companion volume by the same editors in 2008. Whatever arguments there may be about the 'continuing revaluation of George Eliot's oeuvre' in William Baker's phrase, readers need precise evidence about their genesis, publication and textual revisions and (in some cases) meanings, and Antonie van den Broek's edition provides a wealth of such information. It includes 'all variants in MSS and printed versions'; 'original spelling and punctuation have been …

Annual Report 2005, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Our year began uneventfully with the AGM held for the first time at the Heritage Centre with the added advantage of easy and free parking and the opportunity to provide refreshments. There were no changes to the Fellowship Council or to the officers. The Lord Mayor of Coventry, Councillor John Gazey, had suggested that there should be a literary lunch in Coventry to celebrate George Eliot and this took place on 16 April. We had worked with the Mayor's secretary in making all the arrangements but the first disappointment was that, on arrival at the splendid St Mary's Guildhall, the …

“Plain Broad Narratives Of Substantial Facts”: Credibility, Narrative, And Hakluyt’S Principall Navigations, Julia Schleck

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This article compares voyage narratives printed in Richard Hakluyt’s 1589 Principall Navigations to contemporaneous travel histories in an effort to contextualize the epistemological status of each group of texts and debunk the former’s reputation for greater factuality. It critiques the use commonly made of Hakluyt’s narratives in literary studies, arguing that the privileging of these texts over other sources results in postcolonial studies that ironically valorize a type of writing which promoted the colonial mindset these studies seek to expose.

Aesop's Fables And George Eliot's Brother And Sisters Sonnets, Margaret Wolfit

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is always exciting to discover something new and to come upon it unexpectedly. That was my happy experience a few years ago. I had decided to try my hand at devising a biographical programme on George Eliot and to attempt to portray her at the end of her life, reminiscing on past events. I wanted to absorb as much as I could about her, starting with her early days. What were the influences that shaped her life and writing? What books had she read as a child?

She tells us: 'I could not be satisfied with the things around …

Malory Meets Wagner In Madrid: Albéniz's Merlin And The Mythologizing Of Arthur, Robert S. Haller

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Essay preapred for the Modern Language Association on Catalan composer Isaac Albéniz's opera Merlin and the mythologizing of Arthur.

Review Of George Eliot's Dialogue With John Milton, Anna K. Nardo

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This, despite some blemishes and limitations indicated in passing below, is an examination of selected writings by Milton, the stories about him, and the engagement with his life and works which is reflected in the life and works of George Eliot. Nardo's primary aim is to show how Eliot's 'strenuous dialogue with Milton's life and art ... animated the epic novels she wrote for an age of unbelief' (1). Immediately we are struck by the large claims implied by 'animated' and 'epic' and the convenient but dubious definition of 'an age of unbelief'. The statement does scant service to the …

Romantic Love As A Spiritual Companionship? A Buddhist Re-Reading Of George Eliot, Richard Winter

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Introduction

Like most of George Eliot's fiction, Daniel Deronda can be read as a story about the possibility of redemption. Gwendolen Harleth' s vanity and ambition make her vulnerable to Grandcourt' s desire for dominance, and their marriage is a disaster. Belatedly, Gwendolen comes to recognise that a marriage to Daniel Deronda instead of Grandcourt might have rescued her from her egotism and led to her moral and emotional salvation. But for Deronda finding a wife is part of exploring a wider social and spiritual significance for his existence - i.e. his Jewish cultural origin and the Zionist religious, historical, …

Review Of Our Daughters Must Be Wives: Marriageable Young Women In The Novels Of Dickens, Eliot And Hardy, Britta Zangen

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Adopting the' 1st Gent's' maxim from the epigraph to chapter ten of Eliot's Daniel Deronda: 'Our daughters must be wives and to be wives must be what men will choose:/ Men's taste is women's test [ ....] ‘, Britta Zangen sets out to test the accuracy of this epigram throughout the Victorian period. The book is ambitious in scope, placing analysis of the marriageable woman in the complete works of Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy, within a thorough socio-historical framework which details shifting attitudes to the Woman Question from the 1840s to the 1890s. These weighty sections of historical 'context' are …

Adam Bede, Geoffrey Beevers

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Adam Bede is not easily adaptable to the stage. Its structure is essentially narrative rather than dramatic, and much of its interest consists in the probing of moral issues and analysis of motive. A straightforward retelling of the plot without any sort of commentary (as often happens with television adaptations) would leave it an empty shell. Geoffrey Beevers is well aware of this and is concerned to preserve as much of George Eliot's own voice as he can. One way of doing this would have been to include a 'voice over' explaining, commenting and interpreting (as was done for example …

Japanese Branch Report 2004, Keiji Yata

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday, 27 November 2004, the eighth annual convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Literature Hall in Kobe College (Kobe Jogakuin).

The morning session began with an opening address by Kazuo Fujikawa (Okayama University), followed by a welcome address by Masako Hirai (Kobe College). In the morning, we had three papers. The first two papers were introduced and commented upon by Toshie Maeda (Kansai University), while Hiroshi Oshima (Hyogo University of Teacher Education) introduced and commented upon the third.

Nana Yano (Shirayuri College) read the first paper, 'Hetty and Water Imagery in Adam Bede'. Her …

The Widening Vision And Undying Hope In The Spanish Gypsy, Miyuki Amano

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On 20 May 1839, young Mary Ann Evans wrote to her close friend, Maria Lewis, about her 'oscillating judgment' on a religious matter: 'On no subject do I veer to all points of the compass more frequently than on the nature of the visible church. I am powerfully attracted in a certain direction but when I am about to settle there, counter assertions shake me from my position'.1 This confession foreshadows a characteristic pattern of thinking of the later George Eliot. Her keen insight enables her to grasp the validity of multiple perspectives, and at the same time prevents her …

The Thirty-Third George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2004 'School-Time': George Eliot And Education, Dinah Birch

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In George Eliot's first piece of published fiction, the hero - if that's the right word for the hapless Reverend Amos Barton - is no advertisement for the conventional schooling of a middle-class Englishman. Though he has managed to struggle through the university degree he needs to qualify him for a clerical life, his years as a student have not made an intellectual of Amos: 'Mr. Barton had not the gift of perfect accuracy in English orthography and syntax, which was unfortunate, as he was known not to be a Hebrew scholar, and not in the least suspected of being …

Annual Report 2004, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Our year never gets off to an exciting start because the first event is the Annual General Meeting but the 2004 one was rather different. The business meeting was completed swiftly as there was no change to the Council or to the officers. There was still some concern about the positions of Chairman and Secretary as there were no nominations for either post although it was known that both were eager to be replaced. The meeting was very well attended but this was obviously because we followed the business meeting with a visit from Louis Marks who produced the BBC …

Aspects Of 'Indefiniteness' In George Eliot's Middlemarch, Omar Sabbagh

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In this article I will be teasing out the significance of the various uses and senses of 'indefiniteness' in Middlemarch. Whether it is in relationships between other characters, or between Dorothea and other characters, or between Dorothea and herself, or indeed between Dorothea and the novel or the reader, it will be seen that indefiniteness often stands in for unfavourable conceptions of abstraction and externality, and that all contribute to disharmony in Eliot's rendering. This disharmony is resolved by the end of the novel, and it seems to me that this particular resolution is one of the novel's main themes. …

Address At Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden, Nuneaton 13 June 2004, Nada Lyons

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I am honoured and delighted to be here today to pay tribute to my great-great-grandfather, George Henry Lewes, and to George Eliot in the year that marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of their life together. From an early age they have been part of my life. At home I sat on a sofa that belonged to them. Books by and about them lined our shelves. And occasionally biographers would visit my mother when they were researching their books. I was always very proud of Lewes's wide achievements as a writer and literary critic, scientist and amateur actor, raconteur …

Review Of Monomania: The Flight From Everyday Life In Literature And Art, Marina Van Zuylen

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The obvious monomaniac in Middlemarch is Casaubon, determined and devoted to writing his 'Key to All Mythologies'. This, his idee fixe, orders his world and certainly his relationship with his wife Dorothea, who seems an unwitting victim of his obsession and his coldness. But in Marina van Zuylen's Monomania, Dorothea becomes the focus of attention: in a chapter on Middlemarch, Miss Brooke's persistent 'urge to sublimate' her will to Casaubon's is read as monomania, with compelling results.

Van Zuylen's interdisciplinary study surveys incarnations of monomania beginning in nineteenth-century Europe; she constructs monomania as an obsession whose psychical function is to …

Address At Wreath-Laying In Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey 24 June 2004, Gabriel Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

150 years ago, in 1854, George Eliot, still Marian Evans at that point, and George Henry Lewes made the momentous decision to live together. They did so for 24 years until Lewes died and, in the first five years together, made literary history. We know they couldn't marry, we know that neither of them was regarded as physically attractive but, to quote an apposite line from a Shakespeare sonnet: Let me not to the marriage of true minds, admit impediment. Not even in this place.

The inspirational meeting of such minds and the rich love the two bore each other …

Review Of George Eliot & Middlemarch, Tim Dolin, George Eliot

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Both books under review appear in series that aim to give new currency to texts and authors by the provision of critical and cultural context. The implied audience is not simply the old 'sixth form and junior undergraduate' cohorts: there is a presumption of an informed wider readership which appreciates and in some cases requires assistance from critical commentary and scholarly apparatus. Such guidance is appropriately supplied in accordance with their respective series briefs by Gregory Maertz in his edition of Middlemarch and Tim Dolin in his study of George Eliot. Maertz makes a distinct scholarly contribution to study of …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship 2005 No. 36, Beryl Gray, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

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

ARTICLES Dinah Birch: 'School-Time': George Eliot and Education (The Thirty-Second George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 16 October 2004) ................................... 7

Ceri Hunter: Moving Beyond Signs: The Crisis of Language in Daniel Deronda (Prize Essay) ................................................................................ 17

Leonee Ormond: George Eliot and the Victorian Art World ........................... 25

Bonnie Shannon McMullen: Legitimate Plots, Private Lots in Felix Holt and Daniel Deronda ........................................................................................................ .39

Omar Sabbagh: Aspects of 'Indefiniteness' in Middlemarch............................................... 46

Richard Winter: Romantic Love as Spiritual Companionship? A Buddhist Re-reading of George Eliot ......................................................................... 53

Miyuki Amano: The Widening Vision and Undying Hope in The …

Moving Beyond Signs: The Crisis Of Language In Daniel Deronda, Ceri Hunter

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is no critical initiative to point out that George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876) plays with the premises of realist narrative art.! Previous readings have, however, tended to engage only tangentially with the way in which the novel scrutinises the use of language? This omission of linguistic context is curious, given that Daniel Deronda is set during a decade which placed the Victorian ruling classes' confidence in the English language under strain. The 1860s teemed with words. There were more English speakers than ever before, owing to population increase and dispersal. The English language was democratised by the 1867 reform …

Review Of The Effective Protagonist In The Nineteenth-Century British Novel: Scott, Bronte, Eliot, Wilde, Terence Dawson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Let me declare my critical prejudices from the outset. Terence Dawson's study is a work of psychological criticism, of post-Jungian criticism to be exact, and I am frequently left unconvinced by such critical inquiry. As Dawson admits, 'it is often held that the weakness of psychological analyses of literary works is that they require the reader to accept their premises. This both is, and is not so.' In the case of Dawson's book, I can't help but feel that it is so, and by the end of a dense, if often suggestive, study, I remained unpersuaded as to the merits …

George Eliot And The Victorian Art World, Leonee Ormond

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Reading the letters and diaries of Victorian practitioners of the different arts reminds us that their social world differed markedly from that of artists today. In nineteenth-century London the number of people involved was sufficiently small for artists of all kinds to meet each other regularly.

Among the public functions at which such meetings could take place were the various events at the Royal Academy, held in the National Gallery building in Trafalgar Square until 1868 and, after that, in the Academy's grand new residence at Burlington House in Piccadilly. The Private View of the summer exhibition in May was …

Legitimate Plots, Private Lots In Felix Holt And Daniel Deronda, Bonnie Shannon Mcmullen

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A preoccupation with the idea of home was central to George Eliot's fiction from its beginnings until its end. In Felix Holt and Daniel Deronda, however, this theme is developed in terms that involve legal complexities that have embroiled her characters, perplexed her readers, and sent the author to seek advice and reassurance from the barrister Frederic Harrison. Esther Lyon has a 'right in remainder'! in a property, while Harold Transome has 'a reversion tantamount to possession' (p. 284), Sir Hugo Mallinger is a tenant for life, his nephew Grandcourt a tenant in tail. These intricacies of plot have puzzled …

George Eliot Birthday Lucheon, 21 November 2004 The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a special year because it is ISO years since George Eliot and G. H. Lewes began to live together openly. 22 November 1854 was her thirty-fifth birthday. Where were she and Lewes? What were they doing?

They were in Berlin, having moved on from Weimar on 3 November. They had left England on 19 July, the day Marian Evans sent her famous telegram to her Coventry friends Charles and Cara Bray and Sara Hennell:

Dear Friends - all three

I have only time to say good bye and God bless you. Poste Restante, Weimar

for …

Review Of Gender And The Victorian Periodical, Hilary Fraser, Stephanie Green, Judith Johnston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'We are dominated by Journalism' 'a really remarkable power', Oscar Wilde observed, not entirely neutrally, in 'The Soul of Man under Socialism' published in the Fortnightly Review in 1891. Like many of his contemporaries, Wilde recognized not only the power of the press, but also its modernity. In this wide ranging and important study Hilary Fraser, Stephanie Green and Judith Johnston argue that precisely because of its power the periodical press occupied a central position in the construction of gender in Victorian cultural history.

Journalism was gendered masculine by those who accorded it a lofty status within the profession of …

The Exceptional Woman And Her Audience: Armgart, Performance, And Authorship

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Mirah, the Alcharisi, Gwendolen, Dinah, and Rosamond are all, to various degrees, performing women. Eliot's grandest diva, however, is also her least studied. The opera singer Armgart takes centre stage in the poetic closet drama of the same name that Eliot wrote in 1861. A focused study of an exceptional woman, Armgart conveys both Eliot's belief in the dangers of the influence of public opinion and her belief that exceptionally talented women could gain power through interacting with audiences. Armgart demonstrates that Eliot advocated for community among exceptional women and ordinary women. Finally, Armgart's examination of the talented female performer …

Address At Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden, Nuneaton 8 June 2003, Catherine Nisbet

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is now I suppose more than six months since Kathleen asked me to deliver this address and whilst I have given the task much thought, it is only now, a few days before the event, that I am committing myself to paper. I followed my usual course when faced with any task at the museum. I've thought a great deal around the subject often in the middle of the night or on my commute to and from work. I have done my research, scanned books, looked at previous examples and most important of all talked to other people who …

Notes On Contributors 2004

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Kathleen Adams has been Secretary of the Fellowship since 1968. She initiated the Review in 1970, was editor until 1981 and co-editor 1982-91. She published Those of Us Who Loved Her in 1980 and A Community of Interest: The Story of the George Eliot Fellowship 1930-2000 in 2000.

Beryl Gray teaches literature at the Faculty of Continuing Education, Birkbeck College. She is the author of George Eliot and Music (1989) and many articles on George Eliot. Her current project concerns the figure of the dog in Victorian Culture.

Barbara Hardy is Emeritus Professor of English, University of London, and her …

Review Of Dead From The Waist Down. Scholars And Scholarship In Literature And The Popular Imagination, A.D. Nuttall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In this book, which derives its title from Browning's poem 'A Grammarian's Funeral', Professor Nuttall seeks to explore the profound change that he believes took place in the popular conception of scholars (Knowers') and scholarship between the Renaissance when Faustus was seen as an excitingly powerful figure, definitely 'sexy' as the current phrase goes, and the Nineteenth Century when the scholar became a representative of 'sexless deathliness'. Nuttall believes that a qualification needs to be made, however, in that from Francis Bacon onwards the Knower figure was split into two, the scientist and the scholar, with the former retaining elements …

Review Of Austen, Eliot, Charlotte Bronte And The Mentor-Lover, Patricia Menon

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Patricia Menon's title may be cumbersome, but her theme of the lover who becomes the instructor, guide and judge is a fascinating one. In her Prologue, she finds the 'mentor-lover' in Richardson's Pamela, Rousseau's Emile, Dryden's adaptation of Ovid's Pygmalion and Galatea, and the mediaeval letters between Abelard and Heloise which were widely read in the eighteenth century. She also sees a keen interest in moral judgements in those proliferating 'conduct-books' which sought to regulate behaviour, promote the right education for middleclass women and the right attitude to love and marriage. Such anxious concern with orderly living was intensified by …