Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

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 …

'Nor Turnd I Weene': Paradise Lost And Pre-Lapsarian Sexuality, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

Generations of Milton scholars have agreed that Para dise Lost asserts a genital conjugality between Adam and Eve prior to the Fall. Critical consensus has been so extensive that Adam and Eve's sexual intimacy is a veritable non-question in Milton criticism. For this reason, few Miltonists have analyzed the physical specifics of Adam and Eve's relationship... Turner claims from the outset that "Milton . . . insists on a full sexual life for the unfallen Adam and Eve--bringing it to life as fully as his poetic resources allow"... Rather than argue for Adam and Eve's pre-lapsarian sexuality (establishing that the …

The Noble Survivor And The Sublime Victim: A Study Of Two Hardy Heroines, Elizabeth-Jane And Tess, Wei Gao

Masters Theses

In his novel-writing career, Thomas Hardy created a host of female characters struggling to survive in nineteenth-century England. Whether center stage or in the background, these women embody Hardy's insights into the conditions of the female sex--their frailties, strength, miseries, dreams, and finally, their destinies. Throughout his career as a novelist, Hardy's representation of women has not been consistent. His earlier heroines--heroines in the novels preceding The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)--are generally depicted as faulty characters eventually subdued or destroyed. In contrast, the later heroines are portrayed with increasing emphasis on their intellectual or mental traits and moral superiority. This …

Physical Evidence For John Coote’S Eighteenth-Century Periodical Proprietorships: The Examples Of Coote’S Royal Magazine (1759-71) And Smollett’S British Magazine (1760-67), Barbara L. Fitzpatrick

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Gendering The Scottish Ballad: The Case Of Anne Bannerman’S Tales Of Superstition And Chivalry, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Wuthering Heights, Elisabeth Rose Gruner

English Faculty Publications

Wuthering Heights is the only novel by Emily Brontë (1818-1848), one of three sisters who literary productions caused a minor sensation when they began appearing in the late 1840s. Born to Patrick Brontë, a Yorkshire clergyman, and his wife Maria, Emily, Anne, and Charlotte Brontë were precocious readers and writers. The three sisters spent years writing for their own pleasure and amusement, then published a volume of poetry in 1846. Fearing that the volume’s reception would be biased if the authors were known to be women, the sisters adopted the names Ellis (Emily), Acton (Anne), and Currer (Charlotte) Brontë. Their …

"Adjectives Of Mystery And Splendor": Byron And Romantic Religiousity, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

I will suggest that had the history of Christian metaphysics taken a different course than the one it did, it is likely that Byron's considerable objections to religion would have been diminished by at least one. About the particulars of Christian theology, he had little to say, his writings suggest a general discomfort with particular aspects of Christian metaphysics as they had developed by the nineteenth century.

An analysis of Byron's metaphysical/religious misgivings might serve to clarify the nature of his discontent, clearly showing that his particular "heresy" is radically distinct from others of the "Satanic school." It might also …

Canonicity And Commercialization In Woolf's Uniform Edition, John K. Young

English Faculty Research

This paper considers Virginia Woolf the publisher alongside Virginia Woolf the author. While the Hogarth Press has long been known for making Woolf "the only woman in England free to write what I like," it also made her free to be published as she liked. Hogarth, Jane Marcus argues, "gave Woolf a way of negotiating the terms of literary publicity, and a space somewhere between the private, the coterie, and the public sphere" (144-5). I will examine one such negotiation, the Uniform Edition of Woolf's works, a series designed to capitalize on her growing recognition and marketability. Once the Woolfs …

Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway, John K. Young

English Faculty Research

The famous skywriting scene in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway owes more to 1920s advertising culture than has been previously recognized. In their rapt reading of the “Kreemo” aerial ad, the London pedestrians create both a commentary on consumerism and a model of collaborative, modernist reading.

"I Am No Mean Player Myself": Games And Recreation In Irish Mythology, Julie Lynn Perenchio

Masters Theses

Superhuman heroics in myth certainly succeed in capturing our immediate attention, but it takes a more human touch of talent and fallibility to make heroes personally appealing to readers. In Irish mythology, immortals and humans engage in a marvelous variety of recreational activities, and show universally-felt emotions and tendencies, like competitive spirits, creativity, and tenacity. Far from being idle entertainment, play makes significant impacts on the lives of Irish heroes, individually, socially, and culturally. For example, chess games, even between complete strangers, can cause the upheaval of one's lifestyle and test not only the intellectual powers of players, but also …

Victorian Philosophies Of Useless Work Versus Work For The Mind: Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, And Marx, Marlaina Easton

Masters Theses

In my Thesis, I will investigate the dominant perceptions of work that spanned the Victorian Period. One of the most important authors of criticism dealing with work in the early part of the Victorian Period was Thomas Carlyle (1845). John Ruskin then became a counterpoint to Carlyle throughout the middle of the century (1862). And although he agreed with much of what Carlyle said, he brings new notions of work to the Victorian Period. William Morris then offered a completely different point of view on the issue of work at the latter part of the Victorian Period (1885). I will …

Delight, Subversion And Truth In The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's Talking Birds, Terri Benson Blair

Masters Theses

Geoffrey Chaucer mentions birds over 240 times throughout The Canterbury Tales (Tatlock and Kennedy). This frequent allusion to birds is significant, especially since three of his twenty-four tales are actually about birds. What makes these three tales particularly fascinating is that their bird protagonists have the gift of speech. This study examines Chaucer's use of bird imagery in The Canterbury Tales, in particular, his use of talking birds in "The Squire's Tale," "The Nun's Priest's Tale" and "The Manciple's Tale." My theory is that Chaucer uses bird imagery and talking birds to question the sovereign power of the fourteenth-century …

'Rather Say I Play The Man I Am': Shakespeare's Coriolanus And Elizabethan Anti-Theatricality, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Books and Book Chapters

In the second act of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, the hero is informed that his acceptance as a Roman consul is dependent upon donning the robe of humility and petitioning the common people in the market-place for their ratifying vote. Coriolanus recoils from the custom, outraged at the idea of acting a part—complete with costume, dialogue, and stage directions— that does not correspond with his inner truth. At this moment and others, Coriolanus echoes the anti-theatricalist rhetoric of Elizabethan pamphleteers like the popular and prolific Stephen Gosson. In many ways, Coriolanus serves as a stand-in for the anti-theatrical ideology of Gosson and …