English Language and Literature Commons^™

Death And Recollection: The Elegiac Dimension Of Scenes Of Clerical Life, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Perversely, though perhaps appropriately for a paper on death, I want to begin at the end. George Eliot's last novel, Daniel Deronda, ends with a good death: that of Ezra Mordecai, dying with the arms of Mirah and Deronda around him, and feeling 'an ocean of peace beneath him'. The deaths that immediately precede it in her fiction, Grandcourt's drowning in the same novel, or the deaths of Featherstone, Casaubon and Raffles in Middlemarch are of a different order: those figures go more or less unlamented to their graves, and their passing may even be a form of liberation for …

Notes On Contributors - 2009

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Lucy Amis is the daughter of Margaret Wolfit and currently works at the International Business Leaders Forum, a London-based educational charity which focuses on how global companies can conduct their business in ways that demonstrate respect for their workers and nearby communities.

Juliette Atkinson currently teaches at the Open University. Forthcoming works include the monograph Victorian Biography Reconsidered: a Study of Nineteenth-Century 'Hidden' Lives (OUP) and an edition of critical responses to George Eliot's novels that will appear as a volume in the series Bloom s Classic Critical Views (Facts on File, 2009).

Josie Billington teaches at the University of …

George Eliot's Middlemarch As A Translation Of Spinoza's Ethics, Miriam Henson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 1846 John Chapman of Newgate Street published a translation of David Strauss's Das Leben Jesu. Although no translator was accredited, this book was the result of two years' arduous work by Mary Ann Evans, the woman who would later achieve renown as George Eliot. Strauss's presentation of Jesus is that of a historical figure; he denies his divine status, and suggests that the miracles written about in the Gospels are mythic in nature. Although Mary Ann was distressed by Strauss's destruction of all the 'miraculous and highly improbable' elements of the Gospel, she too had, for some time, been …

Orchestrating Society: The Merging Of Language And Voice To Create Social Bonds In Romola, Jennifer Diann Jones

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's Romola (1863) reflects her interest in using musical metaphor to explain how relationships are formed. She explores more fully than she has done before this point in her career how language and the human voice function as music; she theorizes the function of voice more explicitly than she had done before as she examines how it can possess the listener and incite people to action.

There are very few scenes of actual musical performance in Romola and in George Eliot and Music, Beryl Gray correctly observes that the few musical scenes we are given are unsatisfying. It is …

Japanese Branch Report- 2008, Miwa Ota

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday 29 November 2008, the twelfth Annual Convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Kinki University.

The morning session began with an opening remark by Yosie Abe (Shoin University), followed by a welcome address by Itsuyo Shimizu (Kinki University). In the morning, we had three papers presented. The first two papers were introduced and commented upon by Chizuko Watari (Kanasai Gaidai University), and the third by Keiji Yata (Tokyo Kasei University). The first paper was 'Maggie's Struggle in The Mill on the Floss' by Muneaki Shinoda (the Graduate School of Osaka City University). He drew …

Review Of Private Sphere To World Stage From Austen To Eliot, Elizabeth Sabiston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Elizabeth Sabiston's Private Sphere to World Stage from Austen to Eliot is a somewhat perplexing book. Ostensibly, Sabiston sets out to contribute to ongoing discussions about the difficulties faced by nineteenth-century women writers, who 'were confronted with the dilemma of effecting an elision of public and private spheres' (2). The first three chapters, on Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, lane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, argue that the central protagonist of each novel offers an image of confident female authorship. Anne Elliot is presented as a heroine who 'against all odds ... strives for autonomy' (36), Jane Eyre moves from making amateur …

'The Stream Of Human Thought And Deed' In 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story', Melissa Raines

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In George Eliot: The Emergent Self, Ruby Redinger explains that it was through the demands of authorship that the woman Marian Evans 'evolved into another self, her writing self', essentially becoming George Eliot. Literary biographies of George Eliot in the last few decades have all, to varying degrees, focused on this transformation of the woman into the author. When considering George Eliot's first work of fiction, I think it significant that it is during the writing of the second 'scene' of Scenes of Clerical Life, 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story', that Marian Evans first chose to write and sign a professional letter …

George Eliot And The Female Tradition: A Little-Known Source, Lorna J. Clark

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In an essay published in the Westminster Review in 1856, George Eliot delivered a scathing indictment of 'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists' which (she claimed) lack verisimilitude, 'intellectual power' and 'moral qualities'. The skill of such a writer 'is in inverse proportion to her confident eloquence'; the picture of life that she draws is 'totally false'. Her motivation is merely 'the foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print' or 'busy idleness'. Finally, these hapless female novelists are likened to La Fontaine's ass. Not surprisingly, faced with such a sweeping condemnation, critics have found Eliot's relationship with gender issues and …

Idlers And Collaborators: Enter The Dog, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Both George Eliot and her older contemporary, Charles Dickens, introduced dogs into their fiction before introducing any into their homes. By the time Dickens was given the first of his many dogs he had invented Ponto, the sagacious pointer described by Jingle in The Pickwick Papers; Bull's-eye for Oliver Twist; and Jerry's performing dogs for The Old Curiosity Shop. Before George Eliot received her first dog - the Pug presented to her by her grateful publisher John Blackwood - the narrator of her first story, 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', had justified in the following terms the …

Review Of Victorian Turns, Neovictorian Returns: Essays On Fiction And Culture, Penny Gay, Judith Johnston, Catherine Waters

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The inside of this volume offers exactly the pleasurable variety and range of interest promised by its outside (the beautifully reproduced cover image is Ernest Dudley Heath's Piccadilly Circus at Night, 1893). As its title suggests, the volume, divided into two sections, seeks to capture, in Part One, the diverse ways in which the Victorians explored in fiction the multiple 'turns' in new directions the age was taking, and, in Part Two, the imaginative updatings of these fictions, in literature, film and theatre, as well as in scholarship, in the burgeoning afterlife of Victorianism.

The editors note in their introduction …

Scenes Of Clerical Life: George Eliot's Own Version Of Conversion, Alain Jumeau

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Before the publication of Scenes of Clerical Life, few people would have thought that Miss Evans had all the qualities for writing fiction, or, what is more, that she would become a great novelist. She was in her late thirties when she came to fiction writing, although, at the approach of middle age, most novelists have already tried their hand at it. Yet, as she confessed in her Journal, when she started writing the first story of Scenes of Clerical Life, it marked a new beginning for her, because she had always dreamt of writing fiction: 'September 1856 made a …

To Give Is Better Than To Receive: The Benefits Of Peer Review To The Reviewer’S Own Writing, Wendy Baker, Kristi Lundstrom

Faculty Publications

Although peer review has been shown to be beneficial in many writing classrooms, the benefits of peer review to the reviewer, or the student giving feedback, has not been thoroughly investigated in second-language writing research. The purpose of this study is to determine which is more beneficial to improving student writing: giving or receiving peer feedback. The study was conducted at an intensive English institute with ninety-one students in nine writing classes at two proficiency levels. The ‘‘givers’’ reviewed anonymous papers but received no peer feedback over the course of the semester, while the ‘‘receivers’’ received feedback but did not …

"A Condition Of Potentiality": American Women's Utopian And Science Fiction, 1920-1960, Bridgitte Barclay Arnold

English Dissertations - Archive

The 1920-1960 period of women-authored United States utopian and science fiction deserves a reassessment. This study focuses on utopian texts and science fiction texts with strong utopian emphasis and recovers 41 women-authored utopian and science fiction texts from the period, almost doubling the number of titles in existing bibliographies. In so doing, the dissertation asserts, first, that the recovered texts mean that the 1920- 60 period is rich in women-authored utopian and science fiction; second, that many of these texts address issues that feminist theorists did not articulate until the 1970s; third, this means that we must reassess the ways …

The Drag Paradox, Robert Doane Lipscomb

English Theses - Archive

Why are so many of us intent on defining ourselves in terms of those anatomically well-protected, discrete, and proportionally insignificant parts of our bodies we choose to keep covered up in the first place? Drag, the deliberate performance of gender contrary to societal expectations related to genitalia, cannot be defined in terms of any one construct, though the essential nature of such performances, however elusive the mapping may be, is constant. Because drag represents a transgressed boundary between masculinity and femininity, the act of accessing this transgressed boundary in and of itself provides agency because the performance of drag is …

Middlebrow Readers And Pioneer Heroines: Willa Cather’S My Ántonia, Bess Streeter Aldrich’S A Lantern In Her Hand, And The Popular Fiction Market, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Along with repositioning Cather in a new reading context, this essay aims to bring Aldrich and her novel into literary history (and college classrooms) by putting her work into dialogue with Cather’s. I do not, however, elevate Aldrich to the status of elite artist, a move that she herself would disavow. Instead, I seek to revalue the middlebrow as a mode of authorship, circulation, and reading for the literary history of the American West and to place Ántonia and Lantern together on that oft-scorned terrain. When Aldrich is taken note of in Western literary history, she receives only glancing attention …

Chaos Is The Poetry: From Outcomes To Inquiry In Service-Learning Pedagogy, Shari J. Stenberg, Darby Arant Whealy

Department of English: Faculty Publications

It is no secret that the contemporary university values a model of efficiency, of tangible, quantifiable outcomes. Jan Currie and Lesley Vidovich (qtd. in Downing, Hurlbert, Mathieu 9) contend that since the 1980s, the boundaries between higher education, government, and business have largely deteriorated, and business discourse of "excellence" has come to dominate university culture. Consequently, output, outcomes, and efficiency are valorized over and above process, inquiry, and the inevitable tensions of learning. Stanley Aronowitz puts it this way: "[A]cademic leaders chant the mantra of excellence . . . [which] means ... all parts of the university 'perform' and are …

Chester Himes: Experiences Stirred His Thought And His Pen, Chanté Calais

XULAneXUS

An effort to research the relationship between personal experience and the imaginative work of Chester Himes, this report explores the family life and experiences that fuel the apocalyptic theme of Himes‟ short story, “Prediction.” The confused and anxious feelings of the main character, alone in a small chamber containing the collection box of a Cathedral, parallels with the position of uncertainty in Chester Himes‟ own life. While black inferiority and white dominance are depicted throughout the pages of his short story, the underlying need for change is present as well. Just as Himes‟ character believes that the only solution for …

Performing Masculinity In Paradise Lost, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"In Female Masculinities, Judith Halberstam objects that critical and theoretical approaches to sex/gender systems have paid too much attention to anatomy. In particular, she faults studies of masculinity for focusing almost exclusively on the white male body and its effects. By delimiting masculinity in this way, Halberstam argues, we counterproductively confine ourselves to those manifestations of masculinity with which we are already intimately familiar. Urging an ampler vision, Halberstam calls for the examination of alternative masculinities, particularly those performed by agents who are not male by birth or biology.

When we read Milton with Halberstam in mind, we realize something …

No Reason Without Rhyme: Rhetorical Negotiation In Shakespeare, Cheryl Hogue Smith

Publications and Research

This article explores how Shakespeare uses slant rhyme and perfect rhyme as significant rhetorical plot devices in The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, and Romeo and Juliet.

Introduction To Special Issue Of Short Story On Robert Olen Butler, Farhat Iftekharuddin

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Meditations On Studying Abroad, Jaimal Yogis

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Bloudy Tygrisses: Murderous Women In Early Modern English Drama And Popular Literature, Alexandra Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines artistic and literary images of murderous women in popular print published in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. The construction of murderous women in criminal narratives, published between 1558 and 1625 in pamphlet, ballad, and play form, is examined in the context of contemporary historical records and cultural discourse. Chapter One features a literature review of the topic in recent scholarship. Chapter Two, comprised of two subsections, discusses representations of early modern women in contemporary literature and criminal archives. The subsections in Chapter Two examine early modern treatises, sermons, and essays concerning the nature of women, the roles and …

Jane Austen: Bildungsroman, Socioeconomics, And The Feminine Community, Erica P. Lindquist

Whittier Scholars Program

Eighteenth-century romantic comedies are the lenses through which the novels of juvenilia of Jane Austen are often viewed. However, like all art, Austen’s literature can be viewed on several different levels. Particular elements in Austen’s works that are not always focused on are the importance of the three elements of a bildungsroman, socioeconomics, and the feminine community. These aspects play essential parts in the development of the characters and their romantic relationships but also can be distanced from the general theme of a romantic comedy and observed on their individual merits; in effect, they are essential to the overall plot …

World Englishes: Practical Implications For Teaching And Research, Fatima Esseili, Kyle Mcintosh, Cindy Torres, Elena Lawrick, Cristine Mcmartin-Miller, Shih-Yu Chang

English Faculty Publications

With the emergence of World Englishes (WE) and the continuous flow of international students into universities in the United States, issues surrounding the tolerance and acceptance of varieties of English, the notion of standards, and the concept of nativeness all come to the forefront of research and pedagogy. Since English is the dominant language of international academic publication and since it has been adapted and adopted by a number of countries for various instrumental, institutional, innovative/imaginative, and interpersonal functions (Kachru, 1984), it is essential for teachers and administrators to be aware of the pluricentricity of English and their students’ different …

Global Freud (Fall 2009), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

This course provides an introduction to Freud’s thinking, especially on literary and cultural topics. Reading his writing in conjunction with literary texts from a variety of cultural backgrounds, we will focus on the ways in which authors, artists, musicians and film makers from around the world have used Freud’s insights and try to determine in what ways his thoughts translate globally.

(Re)Closure In The Short Story Sequence: Vietnam Revisited In Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain, Robert M. Luscher

Short Story

No abstract provided.

A Companion To Hume: Book Review, Eva Dadlez

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Blackwell's fortieth Companion to Philosophy is a splendid and long-overdue Companion to Hume, expertly pulled together by Elizabeth Radcliffe, a former editor of the journal Hume Studies. Although the Blackwell Companions are promoted as a student reference series, this particular volume is clearly of considerable value to serious scholars as well and probably accessible only to advanced students with a strong philosophical background.

"Ain't You Heard"?: The Jazz Poetry Of Langston Hughes, Kristin Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

It all began with a piano bench. At the age of four, I sat next to my first piano teacher, as she told me the names of the keys. 'This is C, D, E . . . ," she said, her finger touching each key. moving through the entirety of a C-major scale. Afterward she asked, "Now. which one is F?" Though I touched the incorrect key, A instead of F, I remember being fascinated by the realization that I could create music by depressing those keys, making little wooden hammers strike strings in the piano's hidden belly. That fascination …

Translating Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Foreignized Translations Of The Seafarer And The Wanderer, Andrew Timothy Eichel

Masters Theses

Few scholars argue that medieval literature retains the same prestige today it once held as the foundation of almost every school's English literature/language department. One reason for this fall could be the lack of proper integration of newer literary approaches into the field. Why, despite the recent swell in the use of more contemporary schools of theory-Marxism, feminism, and deconstructionism, for example-do many medieval scholars still endorse traditional strategies of historical and empirical analysis? Focusing on the translation methodology of foreignization, I present Ezra Pound's translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Seafarer" and my translation of "The Wanderer." Both serve …

The Letters Of Elizabeth I: Rhetoric For Ruling, Anna M. Patton

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation of the rhetorical skill of Elizabeth I of England, focusing primarily on her letters. Elizabeth's rhetorical prowess is well documented; scholars have spent ample time dissecting her political speeches as well as her historical significance in literary, political and historical studies. Although her speeches provide a firm foundation from which to examine Elizabeth and her relationships with her people, her letters are even more pertinent when examining those relationships Elizabeth sought to establish during her reign. Elizabeth's politics and relationships are enhanced and developed by her ability to manipulate those around her with her words. …