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Notes On Contributors

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Our So-Called Illustrious Past, Kathryn Rhett

English Faculty Publications

I went to London not to see the queen, but to find the Dutch baronet from whom we were all descended. I went as my father and forefathers and foremothers had done, to turn the crackling pages of a parish register and put my finger on our name. I went with an image of Gualter de Raedt, a young Dutchman in 1660, boarding a ship to accompany Charles the Second back to England, where monarchy would be restored. The fleet of thirteen ships sailed from Schevinengen on a flat gray sea as fifty thousand people stood on the beach to …

Chariman's Address At The Annual General Meeting Of The Fellowship, 11 March 2006, Bill Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

My Address at the AGM is usually concerned with our plans and hopes for the future but perhaps on this rather special day I may be allowed a glance at the past.

Last week I chaired a Council meeting for the last time; my first one was on 6 March 1971 - 35 years ago. When I succeeded Stan Dickens as Chairman in 1971 it was just two years after the remarkable success of the Fellowship's efforts to Commemorate the 150th anniversary of George Eliot's birth in 1969. That event became the foundation for our optimistic growth in the 1970s …

Laughing With George Eliot, R.J. Jenkins

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The tradition of admiring George Eliot for her genius is as old as the author herself. Alexander Main, one of her more sycophantic devotees, laid the foundations of this tradition during her lifetime with the publication of Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings, a work dedicated 'to George Eliot in recognition of a genius as original as it is profound and a morality as pure as it is impassioned'. Though Main confesses that the preface to his book is 'not the place in which to attempt to give an exposition of George Eliot's genius', he cannot resist using it to remind …

Costanza, Constance, Custance And Emare: Romola's Medieval Ancestry, Katherine Inglis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Arguably the most problematic episode of Romola for the novel's reviewers and critics is Romola's imitation of Boccaccio's heroine Costanza (or Gostanza) in the two chapters 'Drifting Away' and 'Romola's Waking'; even Romola's most favourable early reviews censured the episode's structural and stylistic interruption. However, as Mark Turner and Caroline Levine have observed, the critical consensus has evolved from censure of 'an unseemly breach in the narrative' to reappraisal of a 'crucial site of interest'.' If an unwritten orthodoxy remains then it is a less value-laden sense that the chapters depart from the novel's overarching historical project. However, it is …

Imagination, Morality, And The Spectre Of Sade In George Eliot's Romola And Daniel Deronda, Margaux Fragoso

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In her final book, Impressions of Theophrastus Such, George Eliot vocalizes her contempt for writers who dismiss morality 'as a sort of twaddle for bibs and tuckers, a doctrine of dulness, a mere incident in human stupidity' (Impressions 134). It is well known that Eliot subscribed to a complex system of morals that each successive novel brings closer to fruition. Eliot's last novel Daniel Deronda is her closest inspection of the conflict between egoism and morality. It explores the psyche of a woman who is made to develop moral sensibilities: Gwendolen's 'bad' luck in marrying Grandcourt creates conditions that foster …

Review Of George Eliot And Victorian Attitudes To Racial Diversity, Colonialism, Darwinism, Class, Gender, And Jewish Culture And Prophecy, Brenda Mckay

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Brenda McKay's volume, George Eliot and Victorian Attitudes to Racial Diversity, Colonialism, Darwinism, Class, Gender, and Jewish Culture and Prophecy will most likely appear on most of our students' and colleagues' bibliographies for some time to come. The topics addressed in this book will clearly appeal to our current generation of scholars and budding scholars; McKay describes her book in the Prologue as being 'chiefly devoted' to the study of 'the race discourse' in Eliot's work. In addition, as the unwieldy title suggests, McKay tries to connect to this emphasis on race issues of 'Colonialism, Darwinism, Class, Gender, and Jewish …

Note On Contributors 2006

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Bill Adams has been Chairman of the Fellowship from 1971 until his retirement this year.

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.

Michael Baron is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of a monograph on Wordsworth and articles on nineteenth and twentieth century poetry. He …

Review Of Adam Bede, Mary Waldron

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This Broadview edition of Adam Bede has a biographical and critical introduction, appropriately integrating G. H. Lewes into its discourse, and useful essays on some of the themes of the novel, - Religion, Love, Rank and Status. There are short summaries of selected critical commentaries from the contemporary to the current, including an appraisal of the feminist divide over George Eliot. The brief chronology is succeeded by a note on the text, here that of the First Edition with minor corrections/adjustments from the manuscript, footnoted throughout. The Appendices which follow it provide foreground and background to the novel, for example …

Address At Wreath-Laying In Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, 30 June 2005, Sally Brown

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Not all great writers are great readers, but George Eliot certainly was. A voracious reader of other writers - Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Scott - she was also very fond of reading aloud. Her husband, John Walter Cross, praised her 'naturally rich, deep voice, rendered completely flexible by constant practice; with the keenest perception of the requirements of emphasis; and with the most subtle modulations of tone'. 'The Bible and our elder English poets,' he thought, best suited its 'organ-like' quality.

Reading aloud - now, sadly, an almost vanished pastime - was, of course, a customary one in Victorian …

Review Of George Eliot's Travels: Composite Characters And Coded Communications., Kathleen Mccormack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When we think of George Eliot, the word 'travels' is likely to suggest journeys to far-flung places in foreign lands, but considered in an English setting, she seems to be locked in either Warwickshire or London. Kathleen McCormack, however, shows how widely George Eliot travelled in her own country, so widely that she made over fifty visits to English places and only thirty to foreign destinations. Indeed, 'widely' is a word that stimulates Kathleen McCormack's imagination as she has revealed in an earlier work, George Eliot and Intoxication (2000), in which the last word, 'Intoxication', is interpreted in its widest …

The Immortal Memory Of George Eliot; Toast Proposed At The George Eliot Birthday Lunch, 20 November 2005

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I always used to be an admirer of Charles Lamb until I read recently his view of bluestockings or intellectual women writers: 'If she belonged to me I would lock her up and feed her on bread and water, till she left off writing poetry. A female poet, or female writer of any kind, ranks below an actress I think.' What a sentiment from a man who was a contemporary of Jane Austen and whose only other defence could have been that he didn't live long enough to read George Eliot!

I would like to begin by expressing my appreciation …

Review Of Literature And Medicine In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Janis Mclarren Caldwell

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The title of this study somewhat belies its range and ambition. Caldwell offers a compelling account of the connections between medicine, hermeneutics and theology in the early and midcentury, and uses these related disciplines as the bases of intriguing new readings of literary texts - unsurprisingly including Middlemarch. Caldwell brings to her work the (in literary studies) unusual perspective of a former practising doctor; this allows her to blend a sophisticated discussion of historical debates around knowledge and belief about the material and the divine in the nineteenth century with an immediate sense of the physical reality of medical treatments …

Review Of The Reenchantment Of Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, And Serialization, David Payne

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'To begin reading George Eliot,' David Payne suggests, 'is speedily to encounter the conviction that modernity is best approached from an oblique angle.' Unlike, say, her contemporary, Charles Dickens, George Eliot's fictions 'return us to the provincial settings of Austen and Scott; and they set their actions in historical pasts which, as we read along, soon appear quite specific.' Payne's study of Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot is primarily concerned with the Victorian response to modernity, but in a fairly specific methodological way, that entwines 'the ideological history of theology and political economy, the literary history of the novel, and …

Review Of Realist Vision, Peter Brooks

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 1884, Emile Zola wrote the preface to the catalogue for a retrospective exhibition of Edouard Manet's paintings. 'Forget ideas of perfection and of the absolute', the author implored: 'don't believe that something is beautiful because it is perfect, according to certain physical and metaphysical conventions. A thing is beautiful because it is living, because it is human'. While few today would dispute the intrinsic beauty of Manet's works, Zola's defense was necessary in its day; Manet's oeuvre constantly defied physical and metaphysical conventions of the Salons, critics, and public and was commonly charged with depicting ugliness in an unaccomplished …

The Thirty-Fourth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2005- George Eliot And Weimar: 'An Affinity For What The World Calls "Dull Places", John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

One hundred and fifty years ago this year, in June and July 1855, the future George Eliot published two articles in Fraser 's Magazine about her experiences in Weimar with G. H. Lewes between August and November 1854: 'Three Months in Weimar' and 'Liszt, Wagner, and Weimar'. When she had, seemingly out of the blue, left London with Lewes in July 1854 to start their life together, taking a steamer from St Katherine's dock to Antwerp, it was to Weimar that they were heading to collect material for the Life of Goethe that Lewes was writing. Known to most people …

Japanese Branch Report 2005, Yuko Nakamura

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday 26 November 2005, the ninth Annual Convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Tokyo Kasei University.

The morning session began with an opening remark by Kazuo Fujikawa (Okayama University), followed by a welcome address by Keiji Yata (Tokyo Kasei University). In the morning, we had three papers presented. The first two papers were introduced and commented upon by Miwa Ohta (Chuo University), and the third by Yoko Nagai (Keio University).

The first paper, "'Janet's Repentance" - The story of an unhappy, married couple -' was presented by Naomi Ohno (Toyo University). She focused on …

A Most Remarkable Cat, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Because George Eliot is buried in London's Highgate Cemetery the Fellowship is a member of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery who care for this vast burial area. We receive a regular newsletter from the Friends which recently reported that Domino, the cemetery cat, liked to accompany visitors. On one occasion some time ago Domino accompanied a party to the huge Karl Marx memorial in the Western Cemetery. One of the party expressed a wish to see the grave of George Eliot if it was not too far away. Domino turned and led them straight to the grave which is very …

Review Of The Complete Shorter Poetry Of George Eliot, Antonie Gerard Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is the first fully edited and annotated edition of George Eliot's poems to appear in print. 'Shorter' means all the poems except The Spanish Gypsy, which is to appear in a companion volume by the same editors in 2008. Whatever arguments there may be about the 'continuing revaluation of George Eliot's oeuvre' in William Baker's phrase, readers need precise evidence about their genesis, publication and textual revisions and (in some cases) meanings, and Antonie van den Broek's edition provides a wealth of such information. It includes 'all variants in MSS and printed versions'; 'original spelling and punctuation have been …

Annual Report 2005, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Our year began uneventfully with the AGM held for the first time at the Heritage Centre with the added advantage of easy and free parking and the opportunity to provide refreshments. There were no changes to the Fellowship Council or to the officers. The Lord Mayor of Coventry, Councillor John Gazey, had suggested that there should be a literary lunch in Coventry to celebrate George Eliot and this took place on 16 April. We had worked with the Mayor's secretary in making all the arrangements but the first disappointment was that, on arrival at the splendid St Mary's Guildhall, the …

Creative Writing: An Elective Course For High School Students, Megan Theresa Myers

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

This thesis project outlines a course in creative writing designed for students in grades 9-12. The course is an elective and is expected to be taken in addition to general English classes taken as a graduation requirement.

The course is designed as a genre study on an immersion principle, which requires that students focus their attention on the characteristics that make up various genres through both reading and writing in those genres. Students are introduced to the overall workshop format of the class and to the procedure of conferencing on and revising drafts through the basic study of the genres …

“Plain Broad Narratives Of Substantial Facts”: Credibility, Narrative, And Hakluyt’S Principall Navigations, Julia Schleck

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This article compares voyage narratives printed in Richard Hakluyt’s 1589 Principall Navigations to contemporaneous travel histories in an effort to contextualize the epistemological status of each group of texts and debunk the former’s reputation for greater factuality. It critiques the use commonly made of Hakluyt’s narratives in literary studies, arguing that the privileging of these texts over other sources results in postcolonial studies that ironically valorize a type of writing which promoted the colonial mindset these studies seek to expose.

Why Public Performances Of James Joyce's Works Are Not A Thing Of The Past, Robert Spoo

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Addressing Readerly Unease: Discovering The Gothic In Mansfield Park, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Many readers are uncomfortable vvith Mansfield Park since Jane Austen includes aspects of the sentimental novel and the fairy tale in a novel of manners, and because Fanny, who suffers and prospers, is an unusual heroine. This unease with Mansfield Park may come from the placement of gothic symbols and characters within the world of the English gentry. By under standing Mansfield Park's affinity with the gothic novels of the eighteenth century, we might also understand our discomfort with Fanny Price."

Critical Literacy In A Global Context: Reading Harry Potter, Jill Reading

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Millions of adolescents across the globe eagerly await and read each new Harry Potter fictional novel. As a series, the novels can be assumed to participate influentially in the production of adolescent literacies and subjectivities. Situated in politically conservative times, however, the texts may support readings in simple accord with culturally pervasive conservative views which favour conventionally masculinist, martial views of the individual and of society. Such readings potentially confirm ancient prejudices built out of differences which themselves may be associated with the socio-cultural reproduction of violent conflicts. Nevertheless, contemporary conditions such as planetary climate change and globalised political fear …

The Best Man, Vanissa Thurman

Short Story

No abstract provided.

"Through The Streets Where We Once Lived": Symbolism Of American Cities In Margaret Atwood's "Hair Jewellery", William Hampl

Short Story

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The Scent Of A New World Novel: Translating The Olfactory Language Of Faulkner And García Márquez, Terri Smith Ruckel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Both William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez introduce the olfactory as a focal element in their writing, producing works that challenge the singular primacy of sight as the unrivaled means by which the New World might be understood. As they translate experiences of the New World into language, both writers record the power of olfactory perception to reflect memory and history, to shape identity, to mark unmistakably certain crisis moments of ethical action, and to delineate a form of knowledge crucial to their New World poetics of the novel. Observing and analyzing the olfactory language particular to the cultural spaces …

"When A Killer Body Isn't Enough": Cross-Gender Identification In Action-Adventure Video Games, Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

While sports games try to recreate the atmosphere of a stadium or of television broadcasts of games, role-playing and action adventure games attempt to duplicate cinematography through animation. For Tomb Raider, the virtual reality created by the cinematic animation of the game produces an environment for male-to-female cross-gender identification, a topic that has received little critical attention. The sense of identification intended in this chapter comes from psychoanalysts Jean Laplanche and Jean-Baptiste Pontalis, who describe identification as a "psychological process in which a subject assimilates an aspect, a property, a characteristic of another and transforms himself [or herself] totally or …