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Editors' Note- 2009 Special Issue

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Conference on 'George Eliot's Beginnings' at the Institute of English Studies on 1 November 2008 was organized by Rosemary Ashton, Beryl Gray and Barbara Hardy. The publication in volume form of Scenes of Clerical Life in 1858 was the point at which Mary Ann Evans became 'George Eliot' and we think it appropriate to mark this event by publishing the proceedings of the Conference as a Special Issue.

Death And Recollection: The Elegiac Dimension Of Scenes Of Clerical Life, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Perversely, though perhaps appropriately for a paper on death, I want to begin at the end. George Eliot's last novel, Daniel Deronda, ends with a good death: that of Ezra Mordecai, dying with the arms of Mirah and Deronda around him, and feeling 'an ocean of peace beneath him'. The deaths that immediately precede it in her fiction, Grandcourt's drowning in the same novel, or the deaths of Featherstone, Casaubon and Raffles in Middlemarch are of a different order: those figures go more or less unlamented to their graves, and their passing may even be a form of liberation for …

Notes On Contributors - 2009

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Lucy Amis is the daughter of Margaret Wolfit and currently works at the International Business Leaders Forum, a London-based educational charity which focuses on how global companies can conduct their business in ways that demonstrate respect for their workers and nearby communities.

Juliette Atkinson currently teaches at the Open University. Forthcoming works include the monograph Victorian Biography Reconsidered: a Study of Nineteenth-Century 'Hidden' Lives (OUP) and an edition of critical responses to George Eliot's novels that will appear as a volume in the series Bloom s Classic Critical Views (Facts on File, 2009).

Josie Billington teaches at the University of …

George Eliot's Middlemarch As A Translation Of Spinoza's Ethics, Miriam Henson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 1846 John Chapman of Newgate Street published a translation of David Strauss's Das Leben Jesu. Although no translator was accredited, this book was the result of two years' arduous work by Mary Ann Evans, the woman who would later achieve renown as George Eliot. Strauss's presentation of Jesus is that of a historical figure; he denies his divine status, and suggests that the miracles written about in the Gospels are mythic in nature. Although Mary Ann was distressed by Strauss's destruction of all the 'miraculous and highly improbable' elements of the Gospel, she too had, for some time, been …

Orchestrating Society: The Merging Of Language And Voice To Create Social Bonds In Romola, Jennifer Diann Jones

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's Romola (1863) reflects her interest in using musical metaphor to explain how relationships are formed. She explores more fully than she has done before this point in her career how language and the human voice function as music; she theorizes the function of voice more explicitly than she had done before as she examines how it can possess the listener and incite people to action.

There are very few scenes of actual musical performance in Romola and in George Eliot and Music, Beryl Gray correctly observes that the few musical scenes we are given are unsatisfying. It is …

Japanese Branch Report- 2008, Miwa Ota

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday 29 November 2008, the twelfth Annual Convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Kinki University.

The morning session began with an opening remark by Yosie Abe (Shoin University), followed by a welcome address by Itsuyo Shimizu (Kinki University). In the morning, we had three papers presented. The first two papers were introduced and commented upon by Chizuko Watari (Kanasai Gaidai University), and the third by Keiji Yata (Tokyo Kasei University). The first paper was 'Maggie's Struggle in The Mill on the Floss' by Muneaki Shinoda (the Graduate School of Osaka City University). He drew …

Review Of Private Sphere To World Stage From Austen To Eliot, Elizabeth Sabiston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Elizabeth Sabiston's Private Sphere to World Stage from Austen to Eliot is a somewhat perplexing book. Ostensibly, Sabiston sets out to contribute to ongoing discussions about the difficulties faced by nineteenth-century women writers, who 'were confronted with the dilemma of effecting an elision of public and private spheres' (2). The first three chapters, on Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, lane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, argue that the central protagonist of each novel offers an image of confident female authorship. Anne Elliot is presented as a heroine who 'against all odds ... strives for autonomy' (36), Jane Eyre moves from making amateur …

'The Stream Of Human Thought And Deed' In 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story', Melissa Raines

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In George Eliot: The Emergent Self, Ruby Redinger explains that it was through the demands of authorship that the woman Marian Evans 'evolved into another self, her writing self', essentially becoming George Eliot. Literary biographies of George Eliot in the last few decades have all, to varying degrees, focused on this transformation of the woman into the author. When considering George Eliot's first work of fiction, I think it significant that it is during the writing of the second 'scene' of Scenes of Clerical Life, 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story', that Marian Evans first chose to write and sign a professional letter …

George Eliot And The Female Tradition: A Little-Known Source, Lorna J. Clark

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In an essay published in the Westminster Review in 1856, George Eliot delivered a scathing indictment of 'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists' which (she claimed) lack verisimilitude, 'intellectual power' and 'moral qualities'. The skill of such a writer 'is in inverse proportion to her confident eloquence'; the picture of life that she draws is 'totally false'. Her motivation is merely 'the foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print' or 'busy idleness'. Finally, these hapless female novelists are likened to La Fontaine's ass. Not surprisingly, faced with such a sweeping condemnation, critics have found Eliot's relationship with gender issues and …

Idlers And Collaborators: Enter The Dog, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Both George Eliot and her older contemporary, Charles Dickens, introduced dogs into their fiction before introducing any into their homes. By the time Dickens was given the first of his many dogs he had invented Ponto, the sagacious pointer described by Jingle in The Pickwick Papers; Bull's-eye for Oliver Twist; and Jerry's performing dogs for The Old Curiosity Shop. Before George Eliot received her first dog - the Pug presented to her by her grateful publisher John Blackwood - the narrator of her first story, 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', had justified in the following terms the …

Review Of Victorian Turns, Neovictorian Returns: Essays On Fiction And Culture, Penny Gay, Judith Johnston, Catherine Waters

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The inside of this volume offers exactly the pleasurable variety and range of interest promised by its outside (the beautifully reproduced cover image is Ernest Dudley Heath's Piccadilly Circus at Night, 1893). As its title suggests, the volume, divided into two sections, seeks to capture, in Part One, the diverse ways in which the Victorians explored in fiction the multiple 'turns' in new directions the age was taking, and, in Part Two, the imaginative updatings of these fictions, in literature, film and theatre, as well as in scholarship, in the burgeoning afterlife of Victorianism.

The editors note in their introduction …

Scenes Of Clerical Life: George Eliot's Own Version Of Conversion, Alain Jumeau

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Before the publication of Scenes of Clerical Life, few people would have thought that Miss Evans had all the qualities for writing fiction, or, what is more, that she would become a great novelist. She was in her late thirties when she came to fiction writing, although, at the approach of middle age, most novelists have already tried their hand at it. Yet, as she confessed in her Journal, when she started writing the first story of Scenes of Clerical Life, it marked a new beginning for her, because she had always dreamt of writing fiction: 'September 1856 made a …

Chaos Is The Poetry: From Outcomes To Inquiry In Service-Learning Pedagogy, Shari J. Stenberg, Darby Arant Whealy

Department of English: Faculty Publications

It is no secret that the contemporary university values a model of efficiency, of tangible, quantifiable outcomes. Jan Currie and Lesley Vidovich (qtd. in Downing, Hurlbert, Mathieu 9) contend that since the 1980s, the boundaries between higher education, government, and business have largely deteriorated, and business discourse of "excellence" has come to dominate university culture. Consequently, output, outcomes, and efficiency are valorized over and above process, inquiry, and the inevitable tensions of learning. Stanley Aronowitz puts it this way: "[A]cademic leaders chant the mantra of excellence . . . [which] means ... all parts of the university 'perform' and are …

Remembering Adiele Afigbo (Memorial Tribute To Professor Adiele Ebereegbulam Afigbo), 1938-2009, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Memorial tribute to Professor Adiele Eberegbulem Afigbo (born 22 November 1937; died 9 March 2009) focussing on his achievement as a postcolonial historian and historiographer, tutored by the legendary pioneer in the field, Professor Kenneth Dike, whose applications of the tools of oral historiography opened new vistas in the study of the history of the Igbo and their neighbors.

City As Prison: Negotiating Identity In The Urban Space In The Nineteenth-Century Novel, Anita Michelle Dubroc

LSU Master's Theses

The primary goal of this thesis is to examine how the city is read in the works of four nineteenth-century authors: Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1860), Honoré de Balzac’s Le Père Goriot (1834), Fernán Caballero’s La Gaviota (1849), and Madame de Staël’s Corinne ou l’Italie (1807). They show the city not just as a setting, but as a character. At times, nineteenth-century urban life becomes so overwhelming to urban newcomers, that the geographical space and its society imprison residents. The nineteenth-century city was marked by change: industrialization, population shift from rural areas to urban capitals, and changes in political regime. …

Cultural Power And Utopianism In Laurie Halse Anderson's Prom And M.T. Anderson's Feed, Leah Dinatale

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Author's abstract: Resourcefully and responsibly obtaining a sense of power is central to quality young adult literature. Laurie Halse Anderson's Prom and M.T. Anderson's Feed show their adolescent protagonists' struggles with identity formation, consumerism, and the adult world. In order to address power relationships, the two novels address the rise of a global electronic and print media system that collapses traditional notions of time and space and the excessive consumption associated with the culture such a system creates. However, these two novels explore postmodern consumer culture from different perspectives. Prom functions as a utopian, revisionist fairy tale in which the …

Contents, Tom Mack, Ph.D.

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.

The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 11 Fall 2009

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

No abstract provided.

Review: Abe’S Honest Words, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

All Children's Book Reviews

Character Themes: Courage, Caring, Citizenship

Review: Song Of The Water Boatman And Other Pond Poems, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: An American Plague: The True And Terrifying Story Of The Yellow Fever Epidemic Of 1793, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: Savvy, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: The Top Of The World: Climbing Mount Everest, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

New And Unimproved: Atheism's Brash But Ineffectual Makeover, Karen Swallow Prior

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Architectural Chastity Belts: The Window Motif As Instrument Of Discipline In Italian Fifteenth-Century Conduct Manuals And Art, Jennifer Megan Orendorf

Quidditas

Offering advice on a range of topics from the quotidian to the extraordinary, from superstition to scientific, fifteenth-century conduct manuals appealed to readers of all Italian social classes. This essay focuses specifically on manuals which prescribe behaviors for women, and investigates the reception of these precepts and the extent to which these notions informed and transformed women’s lives. Specifically, I examine one piece of advice which recurs throughout instructional literature during this time: the prescribed notion that women should remain far removed from their household windows for the sake of their honor, reputation and chastity. Widely read manuals, such as …

Karlsgrab: The Site And Significance Of Charlemagne’S Sepulcher In Aachen, John F. Moffitt

Quidditas

The intention of what follows is to clear up one of the mysteries still surrounding the Charles the Great, now most commonly known by his later appellation “Charlemagne.” Born in 742, the son of King Pepin the Short (ca. 714-768), Charlemagne ruled as king of the Franks after 768; he additionally ruled as Emperor of the West, from 800 until his death in 814. Sources in his time presented him as an emulator and successor of Constantine the Great, and successive Western Emperors presented their own personae as successors of Charlemagne. In 1165, 350 years after Charlemagne’s death, Emperor Frederick …

Utopia Transformed: The Calculated Indirection Of Thomas Starkey’S Dialogue Between Pole And Lupset, Robert W. Haynes

Quidditas

Thomas Starkey’s effort to employ guarded speech and to distance himself from some of the risky views discussed in his Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (1529- 1536?) emulated similar features of Thomas More’s Latin Utopia and, in fact, sought to improve on More’s striking dialogue. Though doomed by the break between Henry VIII and Rome (and that between the king and Starkey’s dialogue’s chief speaker), this unfinished work exhibits a particularly ambitious and in some ways quite skillfully wrought humanist project.