Comparative Literature Commons^™

Wreath-Laying In Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey 17 July 2014, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Every one of us attending this ceremony in Poets' Corner today is surely conscious of a great debt of gratitude to George Eliot for the legacy of her works. This year, partly due to the appearance of Rebecca Mead's memoir, one particular work - Middlemarch - has been the focus of much attention; and of all George Eliot's books it's the existence of Middlemarch for which I am myself most grateful. It's therefore on that work that I shall be focusing today.

For many decades it has been generally accepted that Middlemarch is George Eliot's greatest novel.' The writer Julian …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship- 2015 No. 46, Beryl Gray, John Rignall, Michael Davis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

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

ARTICLES Jen Davis: Silas Marner: George Eliot's most Coleridgean Work? (Prize Essay)........................... 8

Barbara Hardy: Elizabeth Gaskell in Middlemarch: Timothy Cooper, the Judgement of Solomon, and the Woman at the Window................................. .16

Marianne Burton: How Much did Dorothea and Celia Know? Sexual Ignorance and Knowledge among Unmarried Girls in Middlemarch ........................................ 21

Kate Osborne: Mr Brooke's Thinking Organ...................................................... 29

John Rignall: Middlemarch and the Franco-Prussian War ............................... 38

Rodney Edgecombe: Felix Holt and the Gusset of Futurity ...............................46

Rosemary J. Burges Woods: A Life Reclaimed: George Evans (1766-1857) of Norbury, Winster, Derby and Belper …

Chairman's Annual Report For 2014, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

No wonder we all felt exhausted by December! In preparing this report I have realized what an extraordinary number of things the Fellowship did last year; certainly the biggest workload since I became chairman but, one hopes, a year which brought new insights and pleasures to members and non-members we attract to our events.

Our normal pattern of meetings took place but was supplemented by several other large-scale events. Thus the AGM in March, which included the routine election of officers and council members, was enclosed by two much more exciting events. In February we had a full house at …

Elizabeth Gaskell In Middlemarch: Timothy Cooper, The Judgement Of Solomon, And The Woman At The Window, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" Gaskell and Harriet Martineau were the only living novelists George Eliot praised, and very briefly. George Eliot and Gaskell never met but corresponded, admired each other's work, and in several books George Eliot unconsciously drew on details and characters from Gaskell novels.3 There are three important details in Middlemarch - which Gaskell never read because she died before its publication - deriving from Cousin Phillis, Wives and Daughters, and North and South.

Chapter 56 of Middlemarch is a meeting-point for history and the personal life. Caleb Garth's social confidence rings loud as he speaks …

Note: Alcharisi And The Redundant Definite Article, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In critical and scholarly writing about Daniel Deronda, Daniel's mother, the Princess Leonora Halm-Eberstein, is all too often referred to as 'the Alcharisi'. In fact, the definite article is only used on one occasion in conjunction with her former stage name, when she tells Daniel that 'I was the Alcharisi you have heard of' (Ch. 51). The definite article simply specifies the particular Alcharisi she was. This is like, for instance, Maria Callas saying to someone on a first meeting 'I am the Callas you have heard of’. Just as this would not license anyone to refer to her thereafter …

A Life Reclaimed: George Evans (1766-1857) Of Norbury, Winster, Derby And Belper, Rosemary J. Burges Wood

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Evans, the elder brother of Robert Evans, George Eliot's father, has generally been disparaged as a drunkard who died young, but the following account of further research into his life aims to set the record straight. What is known for certain is that he died on 28 October 1857 at his daughter's house in Swinney Lane, Belper, Derbyshire, and was buried in the Churchyard of St Peter's Parish Church at Belper. He was 90 years of age. On the death certificate his occupation is given as 'A shoemaker at Derby (Master),

The immediate descendants of his daughter, Elizabeth, knew …

Middlemarch And The Franco-Prussian War, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

By the early summer of 1870, George Eliot's work on Middlemarch, then consisting of the Vincy, Lydgate and Featherstone material, seemed to have stalled. In a journal entry of 20 May, George Eliot confessed that she was not hopeful about future work: 'I am languid, and my novel languishes to O'.1 And in fact the last references to Middlemarch in her journal date back to the previous September: on 11 September she had reached page 50 and the end of chapter 3, and then on the 22nd she maintained that she was stuck: 'im Stiche gerathen' (Journals, 138). There followed …

Review Of George Eliot, Poetess, Wendy S. Williams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The word 'poetess' is contentious. For some it rankles, because the diminution of 'poet' is generally considered gratuitous, patronizing and offensive. More often than not, it belittles women writers and their work. Others, however, argue that it is a useful word with which to describe poets belonging to the 'poetess tradition'. That particular tradition demands our attention, they argue, and requires detailed study. In 2003, Peggy Davis wrote that such work had only just begun but more biographical research was needed 'to establish a more prominent place for the poetess in particular and, more generally, women's poetry in literary criticism …

Review Of George Eliot's Feminism: 'The Right To Rebellion', June Skye Szirotny

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This luminous new work - dedicated to 'the millions of women deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by society's misogynist myths' - casts fresh light on George Eliot's feminism, which has often been the subject of controversy. 'I want to show' , says the author, 'that however ambivalent George Eliot was about practical matters, she strongly accepted most of the ideals of contemporary feminists […]. [S]he moves, through her works, from a repudiation of rebellion against conventional views of women to an acceptance of that rebellion in her later works; and, in each of her major works, …

Review Of Sophie And The Sibyl: A Victorian Romance, Patricia Duncker

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's afterlife in adaptations of and sequels to her works is thin compared to those of such contemporaries as Dickens and the Brontes, and similarly the number of novels in which she appears as a character is meagre. True, as early as 1881 the characterization of Theresa in The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford was inspired by the friendship of its author, William Hale White, with Marian Evans in the 1850s, when both lived in publisher John Chapman's house at 142 Strand. Theresa is an idealized character, but recall White's corrective to George Eliot's Life ... by her husband 1. …

Silas Marner: George Eliot's Most Coleridgean Work?, Jen Davis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 1861 Henry Crabb Robinson compared George Eliot's Silas Mamer with Coleridge's 'The Ancient Mariner'. He noted the novel's 'great affinity' with the poem: 'A little child, its mother having frozen to death at his solitary hovel, is taken in by Silas [ ...]. It is to him what the blessing of the animals is to the Ancient Mariner.' 1 In 1977, U. C. Knoepflmacher argued that: '[b]oth The Mill on the Floss and Silas Mamer hark back to those poems of severance, loss, and expiation that had haunted the imaginations of Coleridge and Wordsworth at the turn of the …

Review Of Silas Marner. Read By Anna Bentinck. Naxos Complete Classics, Michael Slater

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Audiofile praises the 'pleasant cadence' of Anna Bentinck's voice in this recording of George Eliot's Wordsworthian masterpiece but, initially at least, I found her reading with its beautiful elocution sounded a bit too like Mrs. Miniver (contrast Eileen Atkins's sensitive reading of The Mill on The Floss for Cover to Cover). The pace, moreover, is generally rather slow and becomes slower still when Bentinck comes to voice rural speakers like Jem Bryce or the company at the Rainbow Inn, and almost unbearably slow in the case of Snell the landlord (the exception is Dowlas, the quarrelsome farrier, for whom she …

Review Of The Dog In The Dickensian Imagination, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The nineteenth century saw great changes in the way the English thought about animals. This wasn't only because of Darwinian revelations; it was also the result of increased urbanization and industrialization. Less frequently confined to the farmyard or the hunting kennels the dog, in particular, entered the daily life of humans as never before. It became a domestic pet, a fellow worker, the object of scientific enquiry; in today's accepted phrase, it became a member of 'a companion species', deserving understanding and concern. Dorothea Brooke, we might recall, was 'always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if …

Felix Holt: The Radical And The Gusset Of Cryptic Futurity, Rodney Stenning Edgecombe

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Most Victorian novels avail themselves of tidying codas in which the author projects the story into a future-turned-present and, counterpointed by wedding bells, maps out as close an approximation to the 'happily ever after' formula as the constraints of realism will allow. The locus classicus for this procedure occurs at the end of Martin Chuzzlewit:

And coming from a garden, Tom, bestrewn with flowers by children's hands, thy sister, little Ruth, as light of foot and heart as in old days, sits down beside thee. From the Present, and the Past, with which she is so tenderly entwined in all …

Conference Report: Annual George Eliot Conference: Middlemarch, Institute Of English Studies, 22 November 2014, A.G. Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Only by combining papers on Romola and Felix Holt. did the 2013 George Eliot Conference manage to attract a tolerably-sized audience; no such problems for the 2014 Conference on Middlemarch. This excellent event was oversubscribed and had to be moved to the biggest room in the Institute of English Studies at the University of London. Barbara Hardy (Birkbeck, London and Swansea) and Louise Lee (Roehampton) yet again organized everything, bringing together a group of speakers who made us think about widely differing issues to do with Eliot's occasional uncertainty, Eliot and Mrs. Gaskell, the sex lives of young nineteenth-century women, …

Review Of George Eliot And Money: Economics, Ethics And Literature, Dermot Coleman

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is an important book which fills a gap in George Eliot studies by exploring with impressive authority the novelist's handling of money and economics in her life and work, on the premise that, for her, the economic was an essential constituent of a 'comprehensive ethical understanding' (p. 8). The author is unusually well-qualified for an analysis of economic theory and practice, having co-founded a hedge fund in the late 1990s and retired from the business of investment management shortly before the financial crisis of 2008. He modestly disclaims any foreknowledge of that crisis but points out that his knowledge …

How Much Did Dorothea And Celia Know? Sexual Ignornace And Knowledge Among Unmarried Girls In Middlemarch, Marianne Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Readers, in my experience, often make an assumption that unmarried girls in nineteenth century novels know nothing about sex, and this seems to be particularly the case regarding Dorothea Brooke. Had she only known about sex, so the adage goes, she would never have made her disastrous marriage choice. In this article I would like to examine this assumption in closer detail, looking not just at Dorothea and Celia, but also Rosamond Vincy and Mary Garth. I do not necessarily want to turn the notion on its head - I am not going to claim these girls were closet readers …

Review Of Middlemarch: Critical Approaches To The Novel, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This book is a reprint of the 1967 edition published by the Athlone Press, one of '56 classic works of literary criticism' that Bloomsbury is reprinting from Athlone Press. This opportunity to revisit and reassess works that were highly regarded in their day should be welcomed and one hopes that the archives of other academic publishers may also be subject to similar treatment. It is not good for the health of literary criticism if significant studies of the past are not easily accessible to readers and critics in the present.

I remember reading this book fairly close to when it …

Japanese Branch Report- 2014, Eri Kobayashi

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On 29 November 2014, at the 18th General Meeting of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan, three papers on George Eliot's novels were read in the morning session. In the afternoon, a symposium on Eliot's poems was held and in the evening session a keynote speech was given by Professor Minoru Kawakita.

Chaired by Professor Kimitaka Hara (Nihon University), the morning session saw our first speaker, Masako Ishii (Kyoto University), discussing The Mill on the Floss from the standpoint of the destiny of Maggie Tulliver, especially in relation to her conflict with the socially restrictive norms of a provincial town …

Mr. Booke's Thinking Organ, Kate Osborne

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A scene in Middlemarch's thirtieth chapter describes how the creative process can slip out of a writer's control.! A letter has arrived from Mr. Casaubon's estranged cousin, Will Ladislaw, asking whether Will may visit Casaubon and Dorothea at their home at Lowick. But Casaubon is gravely ill and Dorothea is so overwhelmed by her husband's illness and also by the thought of seeing Will that she cannot even read the letter. She asks her uncle, Mr. Brooke, to reply in her stead, 'to let Will know that Casaubon had been ill, and that his health would not allow the reception …

Middle Eastern-American Literature: A Contemporary Turn In Emerson Studies, Roger Sedarat

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Live From New York, It's The Translation Of Cultural Humor!, Megan Hosack

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Translating comedic material into another language presents challenges both in accurately representing specific words and idioms and in conveying social conventions and national temperament. As American television programs gain international popularity, there is a developing need for understanding these issues of translation.

Several American comedy television programs have gained popularity in Spain in recent years. Shows including The Big Bang Theory and The Simpsons have been translated into Spanish and dubbed by Spanish voice actors to air on television stations in Spain (Grandio). "Big Bang," the Spanish version of The Big Bang Theory has been on the air in Spain …

De Syon Exierit Lex Et Verbum Domini De Iherusalem’: An Exegetical Discourse (C. 400-C. 1200) That Informed Crusaders’ Views Of Jews, Todd P. Upton

Quidditas

This paper assesses how medieval Christian writers transformed encounters with Middle Eastern peoples such as the Jews into a complex theological discourse via the medium used by Pope Urban II in 1095 to launch the First Crusade, the Latin sermon. It argues that a hitherto unnoted homiletic tradition about Jews originated in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages based (1) on exegetical polemics that stretched back centuries in Christian theology, and (2) on a discernible chronicle and sermon tradition that depicted Jews in varying degrees of apologia based on a prophesied role as “witnesses” to the eschatological expectations of …

The Role Of Rumor And The Prodigal Son: Shakespeare’S Sources And Fathers And Sons In The Second Henriad, Steven Hrdlicka

Quidditas

This article challenges traditional, critical interpretations of Shakespeare’s character Prince Hal by examining changes Shakespeare makes to sources he used, in particular the anonymous play Famous Victories of Henry V. Shakespeare does not portray a “prodigal” Prince Hal character as has often been argued by critics, but instead carefully follows Holinshed’s observations that the prince was virtuous in youth and that rumors about the prince’s supposed prodigal behavior were spread by those who were in the service of Henry IV. These rumors were aimed to cause conflict between father and son. Shakespeare’s inclusion of these two important details found in …

The Trialectics Of Transnational Migrant Women’S Literature In The Writing Of Edwidge Danticat And Julia Alvarez, Jennifer Lynn Karash-Eastman

Theses and Dissertations

While a considerable critical field has developed around US Latino writing, due to the historical, cultural and sociolinguistic barriers between the two nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, critical investigations of these migrant literatures are often not bridged, but rather isolated into respective Haitian-American and Dominican-American designations. My comparative, critical framework defines the interactions between gender, culture and the diverse spatial coordinates from the island of Hispaniola, the Atlantic and the United States. The carefully differentiated objects of study that I articulate in each chapter offer a desirable interdisciplinary orientation inclusive of gender theory as well as cultural studies. …

Unacknowledged Victims: Love Between Women In The Narrative Of The Holocaust. An Analysis Of Memoirs, Novels, Film And Public Memorials, Isabel Meusen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation combines cultural theory and gender theory with literary criticism to evaluate the treatment of lesbians during the Holocaust and in narratives about the Holocaust. Responding to the kissing-scene controversy of the Berlin memorial for the homosexual victims of the Holocaust I claim that lesbian women’s experience of suffering is downplayed and disappears under the umbrella term ‘homosexuals.’ Employing a critical historical conceptualization of “lesbian love,” I consider examples from Claudia Schoppmann’s Days of Masquerade and Verbotene Verhältnisse as well as the personal estate of political activist Hilde Radusch to trace the personal view lesbians have of themselves. Shifting …

Kierkegaard And Byron: Disability, Irony, And The Undead, Troy Wellington Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After enumerating the implicit and explicit references to Lord Byron in the corpus of Søren Kierkegaard, chapter 1, "Kierkegaard and Byron," provides a historical backdrop by surveying the influence of Byron and Byronism on the literary circles of Golden Age Copenhagen. Chapter 2, "Disability," theorizes that Kierkegaard later spurned Byron as a hedonistic "cripple" because of the metonymy between him and his (i.e., Kierkegaard's) enemy Peder Ludvig Møller. Møller was an editor at The Corsair, the disreputable satirical newspaper that mocked Kierkegaard's disability in a series of caricatures. As a poet, critic, and eroticist, Møller was eminently Byronic, and both …

Female Representations In Contemporary Postmodern War Novels Of Spain And The United States: Women As Tools Of Modern Catharsis In The Works Of Javier Cercas And Tim O'Brien, Joseph P. Weil

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, the notion of women being used as tools of modern catharsis is explored through the comparative analysis of the Spanish novel Soldiers of Salamis (2001) by Javier Cercas, and the American novel The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O’Brien. The two novels, separated by linguistic and national traditions, and personal choices by each author, will both be evaluated for their unique postmodern treatments of war, memory, and verisimilitude. Expanding from this base and through an application of feminist theory, the female representations—which are partly crafted by an unconscious masculine language—will be deconstructed for their intended and …

Destination Hong Kong: Negotiating Locality In Hong Kong Novels 1945-1966, Xianmin Shen

Theses and Dissertations

Recent clashes between China and Hong Kong have attracted worldwide attention. Behind such clashes, I see anxieties over the Hong Kong identity. Based on Ackbar Abbas' theorization of the "politics of disappearance" in Hong Kong, this dissertation focuses on the postwar period in Hong Kong from 1945 to 1966. I argue going back to this historical era, which help us understand how Chineseness in Hong Kong influences people’s imagination of Hong Kong. Concentrating on four novels written between 1945 and 1966, this dissertation pays close attention to the ways in which the (re)interpretations of Chineseness in these Hong Kong novels …

Overcoming Gender: The Impact Of The Persian Language On Iranian Women’S Confessional Literature, Farideh Dayanim Goldin

English Faculty Publications

[From the Introduction] The idea that language embodies patriarchal thought processes, severing women writers from the written language and from their own words, was first elaborated by the French feminist theorists Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous. Irigaray argues, for example, that language generally denies women a distinct subjectivity, with the result that the voice of women has largely been excluded from mainstream cultural discourse (Donovan). In this chapter, I juxtapose this theory to the obstacles faced by Iranian women writers of life narratives. Is it possible that Persian could have impeded Iranian women’s literary aspirations, especially in the genre of …