English Language and Literature Commons^™

Technology And Development: Opposition To The Railway In Middlemarch, Paul H. Lorenz

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In Book 6 (chapter 56) of Middlemarch, George Eliot presents a scene in which the citizens of the hamlet of Frick set upon a group of railway surveyors, "the enemies of mankind”, with hayforks. The surveyors escape with their lives only through the intervention of Caleb Garth and Fred Vincy. This incident allows Eliot to discuss the attitudes of the working classes towards the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution and to contrast these attitudes with those of the middle class. While middle class women "regarded travelling by steam as presumptuous and dangerous", the local landowners, who had the vote …

Westminster Abbey Wreath-Laying, Bill Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It seems incredible that it is now eleven years since the very exciting and moving day in June 1980 when a great congregation of some seven hundred people witnessed the consecration of this memorial to George Eliot. In the years before, the Fellowship Council had to make some momentous decisions. Among the most important was the choice of an inscription for the stone - words which would be on view here in the Abbey to millions of visitors for perhaps hundreds of years into the future. We needed to find a phrase which came as close as possible to an …

Obituary: Ann Robson- Curator Of Nuneaton Museum And Art Gallery, Ann Robson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Ann Robson had just passed her 32nd birthday when she died a few days before Christmas 1990. She was born in South Shields in October 1958. She learned to play the piano and was particularly fond of the Christmas carol' Away in a Manager'. The singing of this carol at her memorial service at the end of December was, therefore, particularly poignant. She had a passion for horses, as did so many girls of her generation, and this interest remained with her into her adult life. She was educated at Doncaster Grammar School and in 1977 went to Durham University …

Review Of George Eliot's Selected Essays, Poems And Other Writings, Graham Handley, A.S. Byatt

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 1963 Thomas Pinney published his edition of The Essays of George Eliot, a meticulous, scholarly and conservative selection. It was a major contribution to George Eliot studies, coming as it did in the wake of her rediscovery, more properly re-evaluation, through F.R. Leavis, Joan Bennett, Barbara Hardy, W.J. Harvey and others. Gordon Haight had discovered her for himself in the 1930' s, and devoted the rest of his life to editing her letters, writing her biography, encouraging scholars and critics and initiating the Clarendon edition of her works. Pinney is in the immediate Haight tradition, clear, concise, admirably relevant: …

George Eliot And Greek Tragedy, P.E. Easterling

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A quotation from Romola in S. H. Butcher's essay on Sophoc1es (1891) first led me to George Eliot as a reader of Greek tragedy:

Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our will: nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness. (Ch. 16)

The intensity of the language used here matches that of the Aeschylean contexts that must have been Eliot's ultimate model;2 it implies a close imaginative contact which can perhaps help to enrich our own reading of …

Annual Report, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

An uneventful Annual General Meeting in March began our year and was followed by a much more stimulating AGM of the Alliance of Literary Societies in Birmingham on April 20th, when a party from the Fellowship attended and had the pleasure of meeting members of other literary societies with whom we could exchange ideas. The Alliance President, Gabriel Woolf, addressed the meeting and spoke with feeling about the need to educate our young people in the literature of the past - a sentiment echoed a few days later by the Prince of Wales.

On April 26th we attended the official …

Review Of George Eliot's Midlands: Passion In Exile, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Various biographies and critical studies argue that Mary Ann or Marian Evans's formative years in the Midlands influenced George Eliot's art. They do so by explaining that memories of Robert Evans contributed to George Eliot's conceptions of Adam Bede and Caleb Garth, that Cheverel Manor is Arbury Hall, that Amos Barton is largely based on the Rev. John Gwyther, the curate of Chilvers Coton whom Mary Ann knew as a child, that a good deal of autobiographical material went into the creation of Maggie Tulliver, and so on.

Is there a need, then, for Graham Handley's George Eliot's Midlands when …

Review Of G.H. Lewes: A Life, Beryl Gray, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

For a very long time, George Henry Lewes's reputation has centred on the fact that, for the last 25 years of his life, he was George Eliot's partner. Not a vast number of people have cared to know very much about him beyond an idea, perhaps, that he was a rather freewheeling journalist who produced a Life of Goethe, and that he was free-thinking and - at least until he took up with George Eliot - somewhat free-living. It is gratifying, therefore, that this highly intelligent, quick and versatile, immensely fair-minded man who loved science as much as he loved …

Audio Cassette Review, Ruth Harris, Gabriel Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Gabriel WooIf' s second cassette of readings from George Eliot begins and ends with her poetry. However we assess the value of her poems, there can be no doubt that they raise issues that were fundamental to her. Nor can there be any doubt that the poetry is illuminated for us by the voice of the reader. His tenderly nostalgic interpretation of the Brother and Sister sequence is enlivened by glints of humour as George Eliot describes her devoted dependence on her "little man / Of forty inches", or reveals her excitement when she catches the' 'silver perch" - her …

Review Of George Eliot (Marian Evans): A Literary Life, Kerry Mcsweeney

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Many publishers run series of 'introductions' to English literature - handy roll-calls of the canon, beginning with Chaucer and ending with Virginia Woolf or thereabouts - and inevitably George Eliot has to be there. One is, of course, glad for the small army of academics for whom gainful employment is thus provided, but the question naturally arises whether so many books covering the same ground serve any useful purpose.

In Professor McSweeney's case the answer is yes. His book is rewarding because he is sufficiently master of his subject to make it his own. He forms his own judgements, chooses …

Review Of The Mill On The Floss, Michelene Wandor

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In the radio dramatization of a novel, it is left to the actors to persuade us that they are the individuals whose roles they undertake, but it remains the responsibility of the scriptwriter to select and organize those roles with respect for the overall vision of the originating artist. How well, then, did Radio Four's recent five-episode dramatization of The Mill on the Floss serve George Eliot?

It is axiomatic that, without Maggie Tulliver, there would be no Mill on the Floss; but, in this most autobiographical of George Eliot's novels, it is not Maggie who is omnipresent, but the …

Annual Report 1990

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The year opened, as it always does, with the least exciting event - the Annual General Meeting. All four officers were re-elected and we also re-elected for a further three year term our supportive and generous President Jonathan Ouvry.

The next event was much more exciting. In April Gabriel Woolf made his 21st annual visit to Warwickshire to present the ever popular programme of Readings from the novels. 'Enter the Aunts' proved to be one of the most popular he has ever done, and his own sense of humour and sensitivity of selection made the most of those wonderful aunts, …

Review Of Meriden: Its People And Houses Part 1, Doreen M.K. Agutter

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This publication, said to be 'the first book ever written about Meriden', has come to our attention because of 'The George Eliot Connection' and because it was researched and written by a member of the George Eliot Fellowship. The historical research, dating back to the Middle Ages, is very thorough, and there are numerous photographs, plans and maps. The prose is somewhat breathless, as if copious notes have been written up with great rapidity, and this impairs its clarity. There are some errors in proof: the Clarkes, not the Evanses, must have been living at The Cottage in 1850. The …

Sonnet For George Eliot, Ralph E. Avery

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Great George, when she was youthful Mary Ann,

Strove faithfully to read the mind of God.

At length she sought Him in the soul of Man,

As Trinity’s sweet garden path she trod.

And so with strong, diffusive, voice she sings

The need for each to love his fellow man.

To us her caring soul great comfort brings,

And urges us to do the best we can

To buoy the sinking heart, assuage the wound.

Her passionate art transcends the written word;

True, lasting immortality she’s found;

Sweet echoes of her love can still be heard.

So has she joined …

Virginia Woolf's Keen Sensitivity To War: It's Roots And It's Impact On Her Novels, Nancy Topping Bazin, Jane Hamovit Lauter

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) War InspIred Horror In Virginia Woolf. Her antipathy toward those who cause wars is evident in her two essays, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. The impact of war on her fiction expands from a portrayal of individuals as victims of war to a vision of war that encompasses the possible annihilation of civilization. Between the Acts, Woolf's final novel, is obviously an artistic response to the threat posed by World War II. However, a close examination of her works reveals, to a surprising degree, her early and persistent preoccupation with the consequences of war, …

Victorian Ideology And The Discourse Of Gender In Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders And The Return Of The Native, Juliana Payne

Theses : Honours

This analysis will focus on the perceived harmony or disjunction between Hardy's representation of women in his fiction, and the middle class ideologies of gender difference and sexuality during what is referred to as the Victorian period, roughly the 1840s to the 1880s. The parameters of the dominant middle class ideology are established, as certain ideas will be held to be predominant or widely accepted at a given time. The aim of this thesis is to ascertain to what extent Hardy subverts the dominant ideology, and how he is involved in contesting the conventional contemporary representations of women. Part of …

Doubling, Splitting And Fragmentation In Bleak House, Mary Cleopatra Lloyd Da Silva

Theses : Honours

This thesis draws mainly on psychoanalytic theories, and explicates the doubling leitmotiv in Bleak House (1971), which portrays Victorian personality as split and its society as fragmented. This is seen as a suggestion of Dickens' conception of human identity as fragile and vulnerable. Each autonomous character represents a single aspect of personality, so that conflict, when it occurs, is in fact intra-psychic, rather than inter-psychic. The study investigates the problem of the dual or split personality via the quest for identity, and addresses Dickens' perceived need to reward self-effacing characters and punish the assertive. It explores the psychological ramifications of …

Deconstructing Alice's 'Wonderlands': The Non-Sense Of Nonsense?, Beverley Farr

Theses : Honours

The profusion of literary criticism surrounding the Alice books affirms the heterogeneous nature of the texts 'Which resist the imposition of an exclusive, closed interpretation. A deconstructive reading of the texts demonstrates the tendency of the books toward multiple meanings, revealing how they are transgressive of notions of coherence and structure. Utilising some of the concepts of Jacques Lacan to examine the texts beyond the traditional analytic readings, language is shown to be a signifying chain of desire, structured like the unconscious. Alice becomes Lacan's split subject, banished to the world of language where she finds herself enmeshed in an …

Pound's Cavalcanti And Craven's Carducci, Robert Spoo

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

An "Avowed Contradiction": Gender And Historical Instability In Clarissa, Jennifer C. Berkshire

Masters Theses

As one of the first novels written, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa serves as an important social text with which to examine the eighteenth century. Most theoretical studies of the emergence of novelistic discourse have interpreted the rise of the new genre as a reflection of other broader socio-economic changes. This study focuses on the role of the novel in bringing about such changes--in articulating particular attitudes, beliefs, and opinions that have come to be associated with the middle class. The study involves an examination of Clarissa, Lovelace, and the Harlowe family as representatives of particular ideologies, or understandings of history, with …

Virginia Woolf & Postmodernism: Literature In Quest & Question Of Itself, Pamela L. Caughie

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Virginia Woolf and Postmodernism argues not that Virginia Woolf is a postmodernist but that postmodern assumptions about art can account for her narrative innovations and feminist politics better than conventional modernist and feminist approaches to her works. In rethinking many of the prominent aesthetic and critical positions of her day, Woolf anticipated many postmodernist tenets. This book helps us to understand how and why she came to hold such views, and how we might change our reading of Woolf and narrative literature in turn.

Pamela Caughie brings together pragmatism and postmodern theory to move critical inquiry, particularly feminist criticism and …

George Eliot Birthday Lucheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Ted Veasey

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

As a local historian I have been thinking to what extent did George Eliot portray Nuneaton - more especially in her most local book Scenes o/Clerical Life - and how good a historian was she in this work.

Essential dates, first of all. George Eliot was born in 1819 and wrote Scenes in 1857- 58. She sets the events of Amos Barton and J and s Repentance some 25 years before the date of writing; that is roughly 1830 when she was a young girl of some eleven years of age. Mr. Gilfil' s Love Story starts in 1820 but …

The Tongue's Worth: The Use Of Language To Preserve Culture In Havelok The Dane And The Mabinogion, Robin Davidson Smith

Theses & Honors Papers

Most Americans are unaware of how far back the cultural dichotomy goes, its source, or how significant it is in determining our behavior. Therefore, the use of language to preserve culture in Havelok the Dane and The Mabinogion is examined. The Mabinogion and Havelok the Dane are quite different in provenance, style, and purpose; yet, there are similarities. Each work has pathos, humor, excitement, and human emotion. Most importantly, each explores the questions of who we are, what we are, what we might become, and why we are, with seriousness, sympathy, and an occasional chortle at the ridiculousness of us …

Westminster Abbey Wreath-Laying

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

June 1990 marked the tenth anniversary of the unveiling of the memorial stone to George Eliot in Poets' Corner. The anniversary service was held as closely in content as possible to the one ten years earlier and our Guest of Honour was the Revd. Dr. EDW ARD CARPENTER K.C. V.O. who, as Dean of Westminster in 1980, conducted our service on that important day and had also been very much a part of our negotiations with the Abbey long before the project came to fruition. We have affectionate memories of our association with him during that time and it was …

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Gardens, Nuneaton On June 17th 1990, Hilda Gunn

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I count it a great honour to be here to pay tribute to George Eliot and especially as it is shortly to be the Diamond Jubilee of the Fellowship, founded by the late Francis Cross in 1930.

I cannot claim to be the oldest member, either in years or in length of membership, but my first introduction to George Eliot the novelist goes back even more than sixty years. As a jubilee is not only a time of rejoicing but of looking back, I would like to share with you some of my recollections.

In October 1927 I began to …

Gold-Speckled Wings: Hawthorne And The English Romantics, Judith E. Carr-Beck

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the School of Arts and Science at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of English by Judith E. Carr-Back on May 4, 1990.

"'Flight' And 'Pursuit': Fugitive Identity In Bleak House,", Cynthia N. Malone

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Carnival And Loitering In The Waggoner, Gary Dyer

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Knowing God In William Blake: A Study To Find Meaning In His Work Through Plato, Swedenborg, And Mystical Tradition, David B. Gabel

Institute for the Humanities Theses

This project takes a look into the philosophical and theological sources found in the work of William Blake as they culminate in his epic poem Jerusalem. This study includes an examination of the philosophies of Plato and Emanuel Swedenborg, the mystical pathway, the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah, and finally an examination of the works of Blake himself. We work from a three-fold premise: 1) that mystical experience occurs, 2) that archetypes exist in the collective unconscious, and 3) that these archetypes can be known through intuition and mystical experience. The focus is on those elements which are characteristic …

George Eliot Fellowship Annual General Meeting- Treasurer's Report

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This being my first report to you as Treasurer I would like to begin by thanking my predecessor, Brenda Evans, for her initial instruction into the nature of the job, for her continuing help throughout the year and for her patience in forwarding mail for the time it took to get addresses sorted out. I would also like to thank your Council and especially your Secretary, Kathleen, for their help and understanding towards a "new boy".

Turning now to the accounts, you will see that I have made some changes to the presentation. In particular, at the left hand side …