Comparative Literature Commons^™

Review Essay: Thomas P. Roche, Jr., Petrarch And The English Sonnet Sequences, David R. Shore

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Thomas P. Roche, Jr., Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences, AMS Press, 1989.

Review Essay: Murray J. Levith, Shakespeare's Italian Settings And Plays, Jay Farness

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Murray J. Levith, Shakespeare's Italian Settings and Plays, St. Martin's Press, 1989.

Review Essay: Andrew Burr And John Orrell, Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe, Timothy P. Bryson

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Andrew Burr and John Orrell, Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe, Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1989.

Review Essay: John N. Wall, Transformations Of The World: Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan, Wilson G. Baroody

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John N. Wall, Transformations of the Word: Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan, University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Review Essay: Roger Chartier, Ed., A History Of Private Life: Passions Of The Renaissance, Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier

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Roger Chartier, ed., A History of Private Life: Passions of the Renaissance, Harvard University Press, 1989.

Review Essay: David Riggs, Ben Jonson: A Life, W. Scott Blanchard

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David Riggs, Ben Johnson: A Life, Harvard University Press, 1989.

Review Essay: Michael Hattaway, Ed., The New Inn: Ben Jonson, Nancy A. Gutierrez

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Michael Hattaway, ed., The New Inn: Ben Jonson, Manchester University Press, 1984.

A Letter From George, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

BBC CWR is a new local radio station launched at the beginning of the year to cover Coventry and Warwickshire. It became clear very early on that the station wished to show an interest in and pay tribute to George Eliot. A Letter from George was their first attempt and from the success of this I feel we can look forward to a long period of co-operation between the Fellowship and the BBC in Warwickshire in relation to George Eliot.

In choosing eight episodes of about ten minutes each it was inevitable that the life of the novelist would be …

Review Of Emily Davies And The Liberation Of Women, Kathleen Adams, Daphne Bennett

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Daphne Bennett has rewritten, in this book on Emily Davies, the history of the feminist movement. She seethes when she hears people talk about the movement as though it began with the suffragettes, for her heroine had been working for the emancipation of women for 50 years before the suffragettes were making themselves noticed in no uncertain manner.

Emily Davies was one of the great pioneers in the cause of women but little is, or has been, really known about her. She has often been confused with Emily Davison who threw herself under the feet of the King's horse, but …

Going, Going, Gone.......... But Where? A Slightly Sad Look At A House Sale, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

During the last decade Antique and Collectors' Fairs have flourished in Britain and are a very popular way for many of the population to spend a pleasant afternoon browsing amongst the items for sale. Forty years ago, when I began collecting - in a very modest way - antique shops were way out of my bracket and it was in junk shops that I picked up what I now regard as bargains. In those days few people seemed to be collecting pretty pieces of china or old pieces of brass and the prices were low. Junk shops, particularly in the …

Westminster Abbey Wreath Laying: George Eliot And The Working-Day Business Of The World, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

One of the Shakespeare quotations most frequently used by George Eliot in her writings is an otherwise little-known phrase from As You Like It, Act 1 scene iii, where Rosalind, about to leave the court for the Forest of Arden, says, '0, how full of briars is this working-day world!' In George Eliot' s work the phrase is illustrative of her theory of realism in fiction, the theory most famously expressed in Adam Bede, where the author praises the truthfulness of Dutch paintings, describing the sympathy which is aroused in her by 'these faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence', …

Annual Report 1989

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1989 has been another full, rewarding and successful year for the Fellowship. The work involved in running the Fellow Ship on a day to day basis has much increased over the years and this in itself must be a measure of our growth and success for, surely, success breeds more work - and that is as it should be.

At the Annual General Meeting in March, which began our year, three of the four officers were re-elected. John Bunn succeeded Brenda Evans as treasurer - Brenda had been bowed down by school work during her period of office, but the …

Review Of Annotated Critical Bibliography Of George Eliot, Graham Handley, George Levine

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

No complete bibliography of George Eliot's works and the biography, scholarship and criticism on her exists. This compilation, which is heavily selective and inconsistent, is a great disappointment. Editions of George Eliot's writings are not included, and the selection contains a number of gaps. For example, Valentine Cunningham's Everywhere Spoken Against (1975) is not included. I find it hard to justify the publication of this book: 128 pages, with 3 -6 entries per page bringing us to a grand total of 3 82 - a fraction of what is worth recording - means that by any standards this is very …

George Eliot And The Linnet's Life, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In the last year of her life, George Eliot gave John Walter Cross her copy of The Linnet's Life, which was published in 1822. At an earlier time, she had inscribed on the recto of the frontispiece:

"This little book is the first present I ever remember having

received from my father. Let anyone who thinks of me with

some tenderness after I am dead, take care of this book for my

sake. It made me very happy when I held it in my little hands,

and read it over and over again; and thought the pictures

beautiful, especially the …

Review Of Adam Bede At The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, Surrey, Rosalind Holt

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Gaps in appreciation.

The rash boast of many an English teacher - that Middlemarch is the greatest novel in our language - is enough to put most people off literature for life.

City Limits

Dinah Morris ... played ... has a warm humanity which is a distinct improvement on the preachifying original.

The Staines Informer

Some of our best stories are buried in thick tomes, accessible only to literature students who often fail to appreciate their beauty, or to academics.

Surrey Comet

.... thankless task ... as Seth Bede, the least satisfactory character in the novel

Financial Times

I remember …

Enter The Aunts: The 1990 George Eliot Reading By Gabriel Woolf, Gabriel Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I believe it was Henry James who wrote that any artistic performance requires 'the perfect presence of mind, unconfused, unhurried by emotion.' The quality of Gabriel Woolf' s performance in ENTER THE AUNTS fulfilled the requirements of Henry James as well as the expectations of the audience, and the artistry touched the heights.

A mind had certainly been present in choosing the programme, which provided a perfect blend of George Eliot and The Others. The bickering aunts from The Mill on the Floss seem to be everyone's favourites. George Eliot no doubt drew on her memories of her own maternal …

Review Of George Eliot: A Reference Guide, 1972-87, Karen L. Pangallo

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Karen L. Pangallo attempts to fill a gap in reference works on Eliot with this guide. Entries are arranged by years and then alphabetized by author. There are an Index of Authors, an Index of Secondary Titles, and an Index of Subjects (which would be helped by more detail).

In the preface Pangallo states that she has" attempted to compile a complete bibliography of references to George Eliot," and she cites Dissertations Abstracts International, the MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modem Languages and Literatures, and a variety of other sources. The volume does seem to include …

The Kapellmeister, Bill Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

"Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs. Lemon's school (close to a county town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be found in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of musical celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant's instinct, had seized his manner of playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noble music with the precision of an echo. It was almost startling, heard for the first time. A hidden soul seemed to …

Review Of Middlemarch: A Student's Companion To The Novel, Bert G. Hornback

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Advanced undergraduate or graduate students, as well as general readers who are quite familiar with Middlemarch, should find Homback's book interesting reading. It is well documented with frequent references to the Norton Critical Edition of Middlemarch, which Hornback edited, and to other sources.

This volume follows the standard format of the Masterwork series, including a chronology, a discussion of the historical context, a review of the critical reception, a discussion of key themes and ideas, and a bibliography and an index.

Thematic discussions take place under such chapter titles as "Seeing," "Feeling and Knowledge," "Being Heroic and Constructive," and "Reform." …

Message Of Greeting From The Fellowship President, Jonathan G. Ouvry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It hardly seems possible that ten years have passed since the memorial stone was laid in Westminster Abbey. For the George Eliot Fellowship the stone-laying was an end, the accomplishment of something worked for for many years. For me it was a beginning, as it marked my introduction to the Fellowship, a happy meeting which I have had much cause to be pleased about ever since. For me the Fellowship has provided new and lasting friendships, much information about and insights into George Eliot and her work, the same in respect to George Henry Lewes, the opportunity to listen to …

George Eliot's "The Spanish Gypsy", A Neglected Work, Jocelyn West-Burnham

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

"Undoubtedly much the greatest poem of any wide scope and on a plan of any magnitude, which has ever proceeded from a woman"(1) This was the critical acclaim that George Eliot's "The Spanish Gypsy" received on its publication in 1868. It was a surprise to the writer herself, who had been prepared for criticism. This is evident in a letter to a friend following the completion of the poem (2). She notes in this her belief that many people would despise her for writing a work which would bring her little in the way of financial remuneration when she could …

Debasing The Biographical Currency, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Early in 1988 I was asked by a publisher in Bristol to write a book called George Eliot: The State of the Art. It was to be largely a survey of criticism, scholarship and biography ranging from contemporary responses to the novels as they appeared right through to the middle of last year (1989), the 170th anniversary of George Eliot's birth. The joy was, however, that it took me back to the works themselves as I checked what had been said; and it took me back to the Letters in Haight's edition. But some of the secondary literature - the …

Review Of George Eliot: An Intellectual Life, Valerie A. Dodd

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The tendency to produce esoteric books is one of the less pleasing registers of our critical and scholarly time. Valerie Dodd' s book fills a gap at great length, and in doing so examines a number of intellectual lives, among them those of Mill and Carlyle. It also presents a mini-thesis on Saint-Simonianism. All this is heavy preamble to Marian Evans (63 pages to be exact) and Marian's own heavy (and often passing) preoccupations before she began to write fiction. Sources are voluminous and often cited, so that the narrative is weighed down with references which arrest its flow while …

The Triumph Of Spirit Over Law: Free Will Versus Determinism In Adam Bede, William Klein

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

One of the primary intellectual influences that shaped George Eliot's thought was positivism, or rather the various influence of positivistic philosophers such as Comte, Mill, Spencer, Feuerbach and Lewes, who each in his own way subscribed to an empiricism dictating that knowledge of anything but actual phenomena is impossible, and thus rejected any metaphysical speculation concerning ultimate causes or origins. This is a broad definition of positivism, and perhaps generalizes at the expense of the fine points of the thinkers under discussion; however, George Eliot's ultimate rejection of the notion of a God whose existence cannot be empirically demonstrated was …

Obituary: Mrs. D.E. Beamish: Vice President Of The George Eliot Fellowship

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When Eva Beamish died in March she was in her ninety-first year. Her death this year has held a particular sadness for us since she was to have been our Guest of Honour at the Wreath-laying in Nuneaton in June. As this is the Fellowship's Diamond Jubilee year, it was thought most fitting that our wreath should be laid by our oldest member - certainly in terms of the length of her membership. Indeed, when we invited her, we were under the impression that she was a founder member but, in accepting the invitation, she pointed out that her father …

The Eighteenth George Eliot Memorial Lecture: Novelists And Things: George Eliot In A Victorian Perspective, Asa Briggs

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I am privileged as a historian of Victorian England to deliver this Memorial Lecture on the occasion of the 170th anniversary of George Eliot's birth. The future Queen was born on May 24th 1819, described by her father as ' a model of strength and beauty combined': George Eliot was born at five o'clock in the morning on November 22nd. This was the year of the Massacre of Peterloo, when discontent and repression drove the Lancashire radical Samuel Bamford to ask in his poem 'The Lancashire Hymn'

'Have we not heard the infant's cry

And mark'd its mother's tear;

That …

The George Eliot Fellowship Review 1990 No. 21, Kathleen Adams, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

DESIGN ON FRONT COVER:

To mark the Diamond Jubilee of the George Eliot Fellowship the design by Jenny Quy on the front cover was submitted to Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council Parks Department and is to be executed in flowers in a public flower bed in Coton Road, Nuneaton during the summer of 1990.

The Editors do not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, nor does the George Eliot Fellowship accept responsibility for such views. No part of the REVIEW may be reproduced without the permission of the Editors.

Contributions are invited for the 1991 issue. They may …

Review Of Octavia Hill, Jonathan Ouvry, Gillian Darley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I find that objectivity is difficult to achieve when considering a work by or about someone with whom I have a family relationship, however distant. In the case of Octavia Hill, my great-great-aunt, I have been aware of her all my life as a figure revered in the family. Outside the family I have been aware of her work in the field of housing through my involvement with the Housing Association that bears her name, and of her role as one of the three founders of the National Trust.

It is perhaps surprising that there has been no full length …

Review Essay: Sandro Sticca, The "Planctus Mariae" In The Dramatic Tradition Of The Middle Ages, Robert Edgar Day

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Sandro Sticca, The "Planctus Mariae" in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, trans. Joseph R. Berrigan, University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Three Forged Letters Of Anne Boleyn: Their Implications For Reformation Politics And Women's Studies, Retha M. Warnicke

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The controversy in 1983 over the validity of the Hitler diaries publicized once again the need to authenticate historical and literary documents with great care. The problem of verification has existed since the classical period of history, probably the most famous forgery of all time being the Donation of Constantine, which secured Western Europe for Christendom. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, the Christian faith has been plagued by charges that many of its holy works and relics are nothing more than fakes or fabrications. Three forged letters of Anne Boleyn, which will be examined here, can …