Comparative Literature Commons^™

The Folio Society Edition Of George Eliot's Fiction

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Millennium has provided a number of reasons for celebration, but for members of the Fellowship and admirers of George Eliot generally the year 2000 will see two signal recognitions of her status. Before it is out, the Oxford Reader s Companion to George Eliot, under the general editorship of John Rignall and with contributions from informed enthusiasts and scholars all over the world, will be issued and will provide a permanent commentary on and record of her life and works. And now the Folio Society, publishers of attractive editions, generally with illustrations by gifted engravers, have issued in January, …

George Eliot And Archery, Arthur G. Credland

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

As a practicing archer with a keen interest in the history of the sport it has struck me that the importance of archery to the development of Eliot's final novel Daniel Deronda (1876) has not been properly appreciated. It provides the context for Gwendolen Harleth's fateful encounter with Grand-court, first at the Brackenshaw archery meeting where she strikes three successive golds (central hits), and subsequently at the archery ball, where he singles her out as a dance partner. Later, it is in the course of the roving archery match at Cardell Chase that she discovers the existence of his mistress …

A Family's Eye View Of George Eliot, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

There have been very many views expressed over the years about George Eliot - her genius, her behaviour and, inevitably, her looks. But what were the views of her family back in Nuneaton? It is well known that her brother Isaac, then very much the Victorian patriarch, dismissed her from the Evans family when he knew about her liaison with G. H. Lewes. They could not subsequently be unaware of her fame and there may have been many criticisms of her expressed within the family circle.

Some family letters still exist and are in my possession, but there are not …

Wreath-Laying In Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, Chris Smith

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Guest of Honour was The Rt Hon. Chris Smith, MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The Address he gave is summarized below:

Mr. Smith is a great admirer of George Eliot and it is said that he takes with him on holiday each year one of George Eliot's novels! He began by noting that he was standing next to the memorial stone to Henry James and he reminded us of James's admiration for George Eliot. Henry James wrote on 5 March 1873 'a marvellous mind throbs in every page of Middlemarch. It raises the standard of …

The Margins Of George Eliot: Editing The Journals, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Margins are back in fashion: it's no longer marginal to be marginal. Postcolonial theory has had the effect of demonstrating the relation between the imperial centre and the periphery of empire to be one of interaction and mutual reaction, not of straightout dominance by the one of the Other. Similarly, in textual theory, marginalia and other apparatus are read in a dialogic or intertextual relation to the text and do not simply take their place in a hierarchy subordinate to it. D. C. Greetham goes further, claiming that 'these days, the margins are a peculiarly privileged position, as the formalist …

Annual Report 1999, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

During 1999 we were unusually busy in planning the extra events to take place in 2000. Before I began this report I had spent a few weeks updating the Story of the George Eliot Fellowship which had been published for our fiftieth anniversary in 1980 and now needed a further 20 busy years added. So, as I began the report of activities for 1999 I had many other years buzzing around in my head. However, 1999 is now clear of those seventy years, and I am happy to begin with the news that 1999 was another profitable year for the …

Conference Report George Eliot And Her Work: Anakara Turkey, March 1999, Laurence Raw

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's works are not well-known in Turkey, except for The Mill on the Floss, which is regularly studied in university departments of English Literature as part of an introductory course to the English novel, and Silas Mamer, which is occasionally included in postgraduate courses in nineteenth-century literature. There have been only four published translations of her novels - three of The Mill on the Floss (in 1970, 1975 and 1981) and one of Silas Mamer (1977), plus an introductory guide to her work, which appeared as long ago as 1949.

The main aim of the two-day 'George Eliot and …

Review Of George Eliot And Intoxication: Dangerous Drugs For The Condition Of England, Kathleen Mccormack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Famously insisting to her friend Barbara Bodichon that our 'highest calling' is 'to do without opium', George Eliot is not a writer whom one immediately associates with intoxication, although one of her earliest stories, 'Janet' s Repentance' in Scenes of Cle rical Life, memorably dramatizes the addictive and destructive power of alcohol in the lives of Janet and her husband, the lawyer Dempster. Kathleen McCormack's study casts its net wider than such straightforward representations of drink and drunkenness to explore the tissue of references to, and images of, intoxication, and the drugs that induce it, throughout the fiction. Intoxication, with …

The Twenty-Eight George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 1999, Josie Billington

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Middlemarch is widely recognized as being one of the most strenuously narrated novels in English literature. Many of the most moving, and most quoted, lines of the novel are the product of direct narrational intervention and the reader is aware of the surrounding, solicitous presence of the author-narrator throughout the novel. Throughout this paper, I am going to be looking closely at a number of short passages from the novel in order to try to establish the 'tasks' - as I call them - which George Eliot undertakes and fulfils through her narrator in Middlemarch. But I should like to …

Towards A Critical Reputation: Henry James On Felix Holt, The Radical, Christine Richards

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A productive starting point for a critical evaluation of Henry James's criticism of George Eliot's fiction is his unsigned review of Felix Halt, the Radical, 1 which, as his first piece of criticism on her, is perhaps itself most usefully read against the background of the novel's extremely favourable contemporary reception,' for in his review lames addresses the issues of the novel's acclaim, arguing not only that the volume of praise it had already acquired was sufficient but also that Eliot's increasing reputation would only attract more (E&W 911). This determination to call a halt to the praise showered on …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship 2000 No. 31, Beryl Gray, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

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

Editors' Note ................................................ 7

ADDRESSES Colonel Christopher Hendy: Address at the wreath-laying in the George Eliot Memorial Gardens, 13 June 1999 ................................................. 9

Rt Hon. Chris Smith MP: Address at the wreath-laying in Westminster Abbey, 23 June 1999 ................................................. 11

Josie Billington: The Twenty-Eighth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 16 October 1999 ................................................ 13

Kathryn Hughes: The Toast to the Immortal Memory: George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 21 November 1999 ........................................... 27

ARTICLES Rebecca Mackay: Women and Fiction in George Eliot's 'Brother Jacob' (Prize Essay) ................................................................................... .31

Margaret Harris: The Margins of George Eliot: Editing the …

George Eliot's English Travel: "Widely Sundered Elements", Kathleen Mccormack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Although the Midlands people, places, and stories that turn up in Scenes of Clerical Life provide the first and most easily recognized Warwickshire models in George Eliot's fiction, she also drew creatively on models she found during the many holidays and working trips she made throughout her life elsewhere within Britain. Readers' recognitions of the originals of Amos Barton and Mr. Tryan after the Scenes appeared in Blackwaod's Magazine led George Eliot to assure John Blackwood that she assembled her fiction not exclusively from her girlhood experiences but instead from 'widely sundered elements' (GEL, II, 459).' But, while Midlands models …

Silas Marner And Felix Holt: Antitheses And Affinities, Ruth Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

At first sight there seems little to link Silas Mamer with Felix Halt. There are certainly contrasts, but it is harder to find similarities between a short pastoral idyll and a complex political work that looks forward to Middlemarch rather than backward to Silas Mamer. Surely there can be few links between a fairy-tale and social analysis, between a novel rich with 'Rainbow' humour and transformed 'gold' and a much darker novel laced with irony but short on both magic and jokes. Only five years separate Silas Mamer (published in April 1861) from Felix Halt (published in June 1866) but …

Women And Fiction In George Eliot's "Brother Jacob", Rebecca Mackay

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'Brother Jacob' raises issues of perennial concern to George Eliot as an author who was also a woman. In particular, this fabular tale about a hapless confectioner and his imbecilic brother exposes the pitfalls in women's relationship(s) to cultural authority, 'the strange bright fruits of knowledge' (Woolf 160). As a fable whose hero is distinguished by fraudulence and guile, 'Brother Jacob' reflects its author 's attitude towards plagiarists and other impostors with pretensions to authorship. Even as Marian Evans disguised herself as George Eliot, the 'silly lady novelist' of her day is disguised in the story's protagonist, David Faux.

As …

Review Of George Eliot: The Last Victorian & The Journals Of George Eliot, Margaret Harris, Judith Johnston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Kathryn Hughes has written a most readable biography, breezy, relaxed, clear narrative, just right for the reader of literary biography who isn't deeply interested in literature. The story of Mary Ann and Marian Evans, Marian Evans Lewes, George Eliot and Mrs. Cross is as fascinating as the plot of the novels, and bears re-telling, but I'm doubtful about the appeal of this new book to scholars and students, whose needs for information about George Eliot's life are served by the existing biographies, and who may be misled by the sketchy criticism. It is not as if Kathryn Hughes fills the …

Obituaries: The Rt Hon. The Viscount Daventry 1921-2000; Patron Of The George Eliot Fellowship

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Francis Humphrey Maurice FitzRoy Newdegate, 3rd Viscount Daventry, died at his home, Temple House at Arbury, on 15 February. He had been ill for some time.

The Arbury Estate spans 4000 acres between Nuneaton and Bedworth and it was in one of the estate's farmhouses, South Farm, then known as Arbury Farm, that George Eliot was born in 1819 when her father was agent to the Arbury estate. It was because of this association with Arbury that Lord Daventry was invited to succeed his mother as Patron when she died in 1982. Until his illness he had taken a lot …

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden Nuneaton, 13 June 1999, Christopher Hendy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Guest of Honour was Col. Christopher Hendy, OBE, the Administrator at Arbury Hall. He gave the following Address:

We are here today to celebrate the life and works of George Eliot. 'I have heard of him, of course, but I have never read any of his books' - that is the expression that I, and many of the guides at Arbury hear when we mention the connection that George Eliot had with Arbury Hall and Park. At the time that Mary Ann Evans was writing her novels it was not politic to let it be known that the author …

Obituary Of Jerome Beaty, 1924-2000

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Jerome Beaty died on 30 January 2000, at the age of 75, after a year of illness during which he was working actively on Dickens and George Eliot. He was a fine Victorian scholar and critic, an editor, and a pioneer in the field of George Eliot textual studies. His book Middlemarch from Notebook to Novel (Urbana, 1960) analysed the genesis and composition of one of the most complex English novels, revealing that what seemed a seamless whole, more praised than studied, had its origin in two separate narrative beginnings and plans. He showed the painstaking scissors-and-paste which put together …

The Costs Of Scholarly Teaching And Learning, Amy M. Goodburn

Department of English: Faculty Publications

At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) I come to SoTL work from several different locations: As an English professor in composition and rhetoric; as an associate dean for faculty within the College of Arts and Sciences; and as cocoordinator of a faculty teaching development program. This past spring was especially challenging as the country’s economic free-fall led to a year filled of budget-planning exercises, which then turned into budget-cut proposals, and now impending--but still not determined--budget cuts. In many ways, UNL has fared better than most other universities nationwide. The state of Nebraska received national attention when it was named …

Reading Through Galileo's Telescope: Margaret Cavendish And The Experience Of Reading, Elizabeth Spiller

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This essay reassesses the role of reading in the context of seventeenth-century natural philosophy by analyzing Galileo Galilei’s Starry Messenger and Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World. The unreliability of telescopic vision becomes a dominant metaphor for the unreliability of reading printed texts. Where Galileo sought to put the reader in his own position as a scientific observer by making reading a form of observation, Cavendish used the telescopic image to show how readers become the makers of their own fictions. From the recognition that reading and observation finally reveal our relationship to the world rather than the world itself comes …

Providence: Studies In Western Civilization Fall/Winter 1999, Providence College

Providence: Studies in Western Civilization

No abstract provided.

Better Safe Than Sorry? Y2k, Preparation, And The Foreclosing Of The Future, Susan L. Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

My purpose in taking a rhetorical approach to Y2K discourse is threefold. First, by suspending the question of h·uth and asking a question of rhetorical effects, I can take this popular discourse seriously without granting at the outset its claim to truth in its predictions. Second, a rhetorical approach enables me to study how the discourse works and what its effects are. Third, a study of its workings and effects may provide occasion to move beyond the binary oppositions Y2K discourse seeks to pose between belief and unbelief, preparedness and foolishness. Resisting those binaries allows one to answer other questions …

“Falseness Reigns In Every Flock”: Literacy And Eschatological Discourse In The Peasants’ Revolt Of 1381, Tison Pugh

Quidditas

The literature of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, a miscellany of fourteenth-century poetry and prose penned before, during, and after the insurrection, often stresses the importance of literacy to the nonaristocratic population of England. Since literacy was a primary marker of one’s social status in the stratified society of medieval England, the rise of literacy in the lower orders pointed to a dramatic change in the prevail- ing socioeconomic structure. In the literature of the revolt, eschatological themes highlight the tensions resulting from this tremendous upheaval in the traditional estates. The power of literacy is depicted as adumbrating a new …

The Repudiation Of The Marvelous: Jonson’S The Alchemist And The Limits Of Satire, Ian Mcadam

Quidditas

Our present conception of alchemy is, at best, shadowy and confused. As Charles Nicholl states in The Chemical Theatre, "The modern image...tends in two directions: one scientific, the other magical. The first defines alchemy simply and chronologically as early chemistry...out of which modern chemistry began to emerge during the seventeenth century.” On the other hand, “alchemy is popularly defined as one of the ‘occult arts’.... To us, the alchemist’s avowed quest for miraculous substances—the Philosopher’s Stone which converts all to gold, the Elixir Vitae which confers immortality—belongs to the realm of magic rather than science.” Nevertheless, to consider Renaissance …

Comparative Literature In The United States, Manuela MourãO

English Faculty Publications

In her article, "Comparative Literature in the United States," Manuela Mourão offers a historical overview of the debates about comparative literature as a discipline, from the early years of its institutionalization in the United States until the present. Mourão summarizes the most pointed -- and anxious -- interventions of prominent scholars in the field and she discusses the permanent sense of crisis that has typically been part of the discipline. Further, Mourão links the permanent anxiety of the discipline with the prescriptive tendencies that have continued to endure until the present. She then looks at the debates that followed the …

Anabaptists And Postmodernity, Susan L. Trollinger, Gerald Biesecker-Mast

English Faculty Publications

The title of this book was intended simply to bring together two concerns: Anabaptist identity on the one hand and our postmodern cultural moment on the other. Thus the purpose of the book was to inquire about the relationship between the two. The aim was to seek answers to such questions as what it means to be an Anabaptist today, the extent to which postmodernity presents problems and possibilities for Anabaptists, and how Anabaptists ought to live out their faith in the contemporary context.

Terms For The Turning : Some Remarks On The Prose-Verse Dichotomy, Lloyd Haft

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

No abstract provided.

Jing Wang. High Culture Fever : Politics, Aesthetics, And Ideology In Deng's China; Jing Wang, Ed. China's Avant-Garde Fiction : An Anthology, Xiaobin Yang

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

This article reviews the books "High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng's China" written by Jing Wang and "China's Avant-Garde Fiction: An Anthology" edited by Jing Wang.

陳思和主編 :《中國當代文學史教程》, Yee Ting Yim

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

此文評論陳思和主編的《中國當代文學史教程》。

The Power Of Hoodoo: African Relic Symbolism In Amistad And The Narrative Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Alicia M. Simmons

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

No abstract provided.