Comparative Literature Commons^™

"Vicious Animals" : Wang Shuo And Negotiated Nostalgia For History, Yibing Huang

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Hu Ying. Tales Of Translation : Composing The New Woman In China, 1899-1918, Ling Chei, Letty Chen

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Interpreting Early Modern Woman Abuse: The Case Of Anne Dormer, Mary O'Connor

Quidditas

[T]hese hard laws I live under must keepe us from seeing one another.

Anne Dormer

When Anne Dormer, of Rousham, Oxfordshire, wrote to her sister, Elizabeth Trumbull, in August 1686, she complained that she would not be able to greet her on her return from a tumultuous year in France. Elizabeth (sometimes called Katherine) was married to the special envoy William Trumbull and had just endured the events of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Anne’s husband, Robert Dormer, had certain “laws” under which his wife had to live, one of which prohibited her from going to London to …

The Fall Of Troy And The Rise Of Elizabethan Drama: Empowering The Audience, Charles Whitney

Quidditas

The English Reformation, along with urbanization, commercial development, and other major social and cultural changes, both reflect and affect a multifaceted contestation of authority among genres and modes of discourse in the sixteenth century. Robert Weimann finds the Elizabethan period marked by clashes “between diverse authorities engaging in rivalry for the more persuasive image, logic, truth, and form of saying things,” as “the claims on God-given legitimacy of secular and ecclesiastical institutions...were irretrievably undermined.” Rather than accept the authority of a document, according to its type and status, before it was actually read, audiences tended to approach representations as sites …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner

Quidditas

Marie Kelleher

This article does not appear in the current volume of Quidditas

Review Essay: Lucrezia Tornabuoni De’ Medici. Sacred Narratives, Deanna Shemek

Quidditas

Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici. Sacred Narratives. Ed. and trans. Jane Tylus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. 286 pages plus notes and index.

Review Essay: Melitta Weiss Adamson, Ed. Regional Cuisines Of Medieval Europe: A Book Of Essays, Debby Banham

Quidditas

Melitta Weiss Adamson, ed. Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: a Book of Essays. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

Review Essay: Linda Woodbridge. Vagrancy, Homelessness, And English Renaissance Literature, Ken Jackson

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Linda Woodbridge. Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001.

Review Essay: J. A. Burrow. Gestures And Looks In Medieval Narrative, E. Ann Matter

Quidditas

J. A. Burrow. Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xi + 200 pp.

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Feminizing Politics : Reading Bai Wei And Lu Yin, Jianmei Liu

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Glimpsing Medusa: Astoned In The Troilus, Timothy D. O'Brien

Quidditas

In these pages I would like to consider the role of Medusa in Chaucer's Troilus—a modest enough enterprise except for the fact that there is not a single reference to this puzzling figure in the entire work, or in any of Chaucer’s other works for that matter. Such an absence does not of course mean absence of influence. After all, Chaucer does not mention Boccaccio, even though his Il Filostrato supplies the narrative material for and fundamental shape of the Troilus. Obscuring authorial indebtedness because of some “anxiety of influence” is one thing; alluding to a figure from …

Review Of Theology In The Fiction Of George Eliot; The Silent Revolution And The Making Of Victorian England, Peter C. Hodgson, Hebert Schlossberg

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The first paragraph of Peter Hodgson's opening chapter on 'George Eliot's Religious Pilgrimage' outlines the conventional wisdom about George Eliot, that 'exposure to higher criticism' caused her to abandon 'the fervent evangelical faith of her youth and become a disciple of the "religion of humanity'" (the lower case letters of this last phrase indicating the problems she had with the dogmatism and sheer rigidity of Auguste Comte's official new religion). So far, so good. It is with the second sentence that he starts to go wrong: 'Thereafter, it is thought, she lost interest in religion and turned to the exploration …

George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, And Dogs, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

[I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Michael Slater for his invaluable comments on a draft of this paper, a version of which was presented at the George Eliot: Life and Letters conference held at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, in January this year.)

In Gore Vidal's Two Sisters: A Menwir in the Form of a Novel, the obnoxious Hiram Backhouse boasts to his unreceptive peers of the admiration that his PhD thesis - How The Spaniel Figures in the Novels of George Eliot - had attracted. It was he, he claims, 'who made the discovery …

Notes On Contributors 2002

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.

Lynda Carnes is Chairman of the Bedworth Society.

Mary Wilson Carpenter is Associate Professor of English at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, and has published widely on Victorian literature, including George Eliot and the Landscape of Time (1986).

Stephen Gill is Professor of English Literature at Oxford University. His publications include Wordsworth and …

Review Of George Eliot And The British Empire, Nancy Henry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In this fascinating and forcefully argued study, Nancy Henry addresses the kind of subject that has become the preserve of post-colonial criticism but does so in a way that challenges commonly held assumptions about the relations between empire and fiction in the Victorian period. Where post-colonial criticism tends to emphasize the determining power of the ideological and cultural forces to which individual writers were subordinate - in some cases seeing the novel as an inherently imperialist form, in others assuming the pervasive presence of an imperialist ideology - Henry puts the author and her own distinct experience firmly at the …

Review Of George Eliot, Judaism And The Novels, Saleel Nurbhai, K.M. Newton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Saleel Nurbhai and K. M. Newton break new ground with this consideration of George Eliot's exploitation of Jewish mysticism and mythology in fiction written before the novel that obviously promotes that tradition, Daniel Deronda. In their introductory chapter, Nurbhai and Newton posit the radical theory that the figure of the 'golem', or unformed mass, which is central to Jewish mythology is also a significant presence in all of Eliot's work, beginning with Adam Bede. But they venture even further than this large hypothesis concerning Eliot's work, suggesting that much of the 'golemish' character of her novels is based …

Address At Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Gardens, Nuneaton 10 June 2001, Lynda Carnes

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Wherefore we come to lay this laurel wreath –

Humbly, in reparation for the past,

Proudly, in honour of thy worth,

With Reverence, as believing still

In beauty, truth and love.

George Eliot, or Mary Ann Evans as she was known when she lived here in Nuneaton, died on 22 December 1880. She was buried in Highgate Cemetery, on 29 December, in unconsecrated ground in a grave adjoining that of George Henry Lewes. The coffin was loaded with loving tributes in the shape of lilies, camellias, and other beautiful white flowers with here and there a small bouquet of violets. …

Conference Report: George Eliot: Life And Letters. Institute Of English Studies, University Of London, January 17 And 18 2002, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I'm grateful for the editors' invitation to report on this conference. I was asked to organize it by Warwick Gould, Director of the University of London Institute of English Studies, in response to the auction and sale in 2001, of letters (published and unpublished) from George Eliot to Jane Senior, apparently the first woman to hold a salaried English government appointment. The 'stayed' export of these letters, eventually bought by the British Library, was in the news. The letters seemed too restricted a subject for a work-in-progress conference, and its theme became 'George Eliot: Life and Letters'. Scholars invited were …

Henry James On Digression In The Fiction Of George Eliot, Christine Richards

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Stemming from a genuine desire to grapple with the complex theoretical issues underlying nineteenth-century attitudes to the novel and its aesthetic, Henry James was one of the leading critics of the mid-Victorian period. Yet his conclusion in his early criticism that George Eliot's digressions detracted from her style, was one of his less astute judgements. We know from his correspondence with Charles Eliot Norton in 1866 that James had for some time been looking for a novelist on whom to write a long general essay concerning quality, originally considering and then rejecting Harriet Beecher Stowe,' and a glance across his …

Review Of Felix Holt, The Radical, William Baker, Kenneth Womack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

William Baker and Kenneth Womack's Felix Holt is part of the relatively recent Broadview Literary Texts series, a Canadian-based series that seeks to publish recognized canonical texts alongside less well known texts from literary history. With that in mind, coverage in the Victorian period means we have editions of often taught novels by Dickens (David Copperfield, Hard Times, and Great Expectations) and Charlotte Bronte (lane Eyre) alongside texts that hitherto have almost never been read or taught widely - Margaret Oliphant's Autobiography, Browning's The Ring and the Book and an edition of poems by Augusta …

Review Of The Cambridge Companion To George Eliot, George Levine

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Dictionary definitions of ‘companion’ stress notions of fellowship and support as in ‘one who associates with or accompanies another’. The question prompted by the use of ‘companion’ in a book title is, for whom is company being provided? I take it that the proliferating series of critical support texts of which the Cambridge Companions are in general fine examples are unabashedly aimed at an undergraduate market, while maintaining significant concern for an academic readership and some for an informed or persistent general readership. It must be admitted that George Eliot is not popular in the way that Dickens and the …

Review Of Women And Literature In Britain 1800-1900, Joanne Shattock

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This book of thirteen essays by leading scholars in the field is an impressive and valuable contribution to the study of nineteenth-century women writers. Canonical figures such as Austen, the Bronte sisters, Gaskell and Eliot are examined in the wider context of the social, cultural and economic conditions which influenced the production and dissemination of their work and reputations. In addition, the very nature and construction of the canon of nineteenth-century woman writers is interrogated.

These essays reveal the tremendous extent and variety of women's contribution to the expanding range of discourses that helped to form the culture of the …

Address At Wreath-Laying In Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey 10 June 2001, A.G. Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In June 1990, the Revd Dr Edward Carpenter gave this address, exactly ten years after he, as Dean of Westminster, conducted the service when the stone memorializing George Eliot was unveiled. In his address Dr Carpenter reminded his audience that permission for an Abbey burial had been denied Eliot on religious grounds, but that it gave him 'great satisfaction and a unique pleasure' to help memorialize her a hundred years later. She was, he said, 'a person whom, in "character; manner and style", it is almost impossible to praise over much' .1.

It gives me great satisfaction and pleasure, as …

Dorothea And The 'Key To All Mythologies', Daniel Tyler

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In Middlemarch, the 'dead hand' of Edward Casaubon, which seeks to take hold of his wife's future, is applied by two documents. The first is the codicil to his will which endeavours to prohibit Dorothea marrying Will Ladislaw by imposing the condition that to do so she must relinquish her inheritance. The second is the 'Synoptical Tabulation' in which he expresses the intention to have her continue his work on the 'Key to all Mythologies'. As early as 1873, it was observed by Henry James that the subsequent narrative is dominated by the repercussions of the codicil: 'Mr Casaubon's death …

Annual Report 2001, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Looking back thirty years to my report for 1971 I found that I had written 'It is most rewarding to be able to report a successful and stimulating year'. Thirty years later I can say the same - despite having drawn in our horns after the less than successful Millennium year.

At the Annual General Meeting in March we thought we were to lose our new treasurer, Sophie Pavier, but she found she was able to continue for a further year, much to our relief. Ted Bates retired from the Council after many years' service owing to ill health. I …

Review Of Such Silver Currents: The Story Of William And Lucy Clifford, M. Chisholm

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is the first biography to record the shared and separate lives of an unusual couple, a mathematical genius called William Clifford and his literary wife, Lucy. Their biographer, M. Chisholm, has had to confront the problem of different lives and interests since the Cliffords shared only four years of marriage, but she has arranged a considerable amount of research sensibly, showing where their concerns diverged and coincided. During their time in London (1875-9) the Cliffords were at the centre of a fascinating group of celebrities, literary and scientific, who were drawn to their Sunday afternoon salons. We are likely …

Review Of Rereading Victorian Fiction; Rethinking Victorian Culture, Alice Jenkins, Juliet John

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

These two fine volumes have their roots in a Victorian literature conference at the University of Liverpool in 1996, which I had the good fortune to attend. At the time, I remember being struck in particular by the erudition of a number of the papers presented and by the impressive range of material covered in eclectic ways. It is extremely pleasing to see many of the best papers from the conference expanded in these two volumes, pleasing not least because these two collections offer an extremely good snapshot representing the diverse richness and buoyant state of Victorian Studies at the …

Review Of Adam Bede, Carol A. Martin

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In a letter to G. H. Lewes of October 1858 John Blackwood contrasted his own discriminating language of praise with the 'abandon of expression' indulged in by what he terms 'the large hearted school of Critics,' and of course one sees his point, as Lewes did with feeling concurrence: 'largehearted critics - an awful Race’. But I do not see how one can avoid joining the scorned 'large hearted'. I am at a loss to know how to write anything that could be called a 'review' of so fine a piece of work as this latest volume in the Clarendon …

George Eliot Birthday Lucheon, 25 November 2001 The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Canon Edward Pogmore

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I would like to thank you for inviting Jane and me to the wreath-laying and to this luncheon and the opportunity to propose the toast to the immortal memory of George Eliot.

It is over a year ago that I was walking through the corridors of Leeds University School of Healthcare Studies when I saw an advertisement for a lecture by Dr Jane Wood of the School of English - and the title of the lecture was "'Webs, Tissues and Predisposing Causes": George Eliot and Medical Science' (Yorkshire Medicine, Volume 12, No. 4, 105-109).

It is not the catchiest …