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Finding Aid For The Eileen M. Curran Papers, Eileen M. Curran, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The collection comprises working files, dissertation materials, photographs, personal documents and artifacts, published reference materials, and accruals by and about Eileen Curran, a librarian, professor of English, and authority on Victorian-Era British literature and periodicals.

Eileen M. Curran was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1927, the only child of Edward O. and Laura (Meyer) Curran. She received a B.A. degree with highest distinction from Cornell University in 1948; an Honours B.A. from Cambridge University (England) in 1950; an M.A. from Cambridge University in 1953; and a Ph.D. from Cornell in 1958. She was instructor of English at the University …

Orts 75, 2015, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

Over the past year, I and a couple of other postgraduate/early career researchers who share my interest in fantasy studies have launched an initiative called Reading the Fantastic (www.readingthe- fantastic.tumblr.com) at the University of Leeds (UK); our focus is the exploration of fantasy, fairy tale and folk tale texts as spaces of multi-cultural and intercultural connection. Initially involving a guest speaker talk and regular reading group sessions collecting fantasy and fairy tale texts from a wide range of cultures, our activities have expanded (thanks to various funding grants). In addition to adding a regular seminar series to our reading group …

Sarah Wilkinson: Female Gothic Entrepreneur, Diane L. Hoeveler

Gothic Archive: Related Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Slipping From Secret History To Novel, Rachel K. Carnell

English Faculty Publications

The secret history, a genre of writing made popular as opposition political propaganda during the reign of Charles ii, has been the subject of renewed critical interest in recent years. By the mid-1740s, novelists were using markers of secret histories on the title pages of their works, thus blurring the genres. This forgotten history of the secret history can help us understand why Ian Watt and other twentieth-century critics tended to end their narratives of the rise of the “realist” Whig novel with the works of the Tory novelist Jane Austen. In particular, the blended narrative perspective that Watt praises …

Living By The Code: Authority In Gerard Stembridge's The Gay Detective, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Irish drama has few representations of police officers as anything but a trope for authority, tending to avoid any substantive character development. Likewise, it has few representations of homosexual characters, and when such representations do exist they are often caricatures. Reductive portrayals of police often arise from the complex relationship the Irish have with authority and with the legal system. But one of the few exceptions to this trend, and the only play to tackle the representation of a police officer and a homosexual at once, is Gerard Stembridge’s play The Gay Detective (1996). The play offers up the character …

Introduction To Innovative Approaches To Teaching Chaucer, Alison (Ganze) Langdon, David Sprunger

English Faculty Publications

Many a medievalist has been seduced by Chaucer. Perhaps it’s the totality of Chaucer’s enduring characters, memorable tales, elusive narrator, and fragmented whole that keeps us coming back. We are fascinated and delighted, too, by his linguistic play and the lyrical cadence of Middle English. Chaucer may have led us to graduate study in the first place and remains a treat that organizes our pedagogical lives. For some who teach in smaller programs or two-year colleges, Chaucer’s canonical status may provide the only guaranteed place for medieval texts in the curriculum and thus represents one small chance to share our …

Pastoral Unity: Constructions Of Nostalgic Retreat Space In Charlotte Brontë'S Shirley, Joel Tyre Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to address questions of unity within Charlotte Brontë's Shirley. From the time of its publication, Shirley has been criticized for major characters and themes that do little to contribute to the work as a unified whole. Critics focused on the caricatured portrayal of religious figures, the ongoing industrial conflict, and the reconciliation of one of the novel's heroines to her mother as justification for the novel's lack of unity. In this thesis I hope to reconcile these criticisms and propose a unifying framework in which the characters and themes in question act as necessary components. Through …

Middlemarch: Eliot's Spencerian Sociological Study Of Provincial Life, Kellie Marie Mckinney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the novel Middlemarch, George Eliot fulfills the intention of her subtitle and uses sociological theories to conduct A Study of Provincial Life. Eliot's letters, journals, and various essays provide evidence of sociologist Herbert Spencer's influence on her own writings. Spencer's specific opinions and contributions not only strengthen the sociological message of Eliot's novel, but a handful of his ideals shape the narrative voice of her novel. Variations of Spencer's theories are seen in Eliot's "authorial narrator's" comments and observations of the Middlemarch couples. With her narrator, Eliot applies Spencer's theories on "belief" and on the correlation of …

Bones Of The Soup An Exploration Of J.R.R. Tolkien's Methodology, Devan Bierbrauer

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Hamlet And Amleth, Princes Of Denmark: Shakespeare And Saxo Grammaticus As Historians And Kingly Actions In The Hamlet/Amleth Narrative, Megan Arnott

The Hilltop Review

Shakespeare played a decisive role in creating a Middle Ages for the generations that came after him. The two tetralogies, which include Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2, Henry V, Henry VI Part 1-3 and Richard III, comprise the body of work that is commonly studied for medievalisms, and in these plays Shakespeare’s interpretation of the past demonstrates nation building, ‘Englishness,’ and a concern about the nature of power. A different kind of engagement with the medieval past is occurring in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, though Hamlet is no less concerned with …

An Analysis Of The Aristocratic Material Culture Described In The Old English Epic Beowulf, Rachel Munson

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

A Life Reclaimed: George Evans (1766-1857) Of Norbury, Winster, Derby And Belper, Rosemary J. Burges Wood

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Evans, the elder brother of Robert Evans, George Eliot's father, has generally been disparaged as a drunkard who died young, but the following account of further research into his life aims to set the record straight. What is known for certain is that he died on 28 October 1857 at his daughter's house in Swinney Lane, Belper, Derbyshire, and was buried in the Churchyard of St Peter's Parish Church at Belper. He was 90 years of age. On the death certificate his occupation is given as 'A shoemaker at Derby (Master),

The immediate descendants of his daughter, Elizabeth, knew …

Wreath-Laying In Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey 17 July 2014, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Every one of us attending this ceremony in Poets' Corner today is surely conscious of a great debt of gratitude to George Eliot for the legacy of her works. This year, partly due to the appearance of Rebecca Mead's memoir, one particular work - Middlemarch - has been the focus of much attention; and of all George Eliot's books it's the existence of Middlemarch for which I am myself most grateful. It's therefore on that work that I shall be focusing today.

For many decades it has been generally accepted that Middlemarch is George Eliot's greatest novel.' The writer Julian …

Chairman's Annual Report For 2014, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

No wonder we all felt exhausted by December! In preparing this report I have realized what an extraordinary number of things the Fellowship did last year; certainly the biggest workload since I became chairman but, one hopes, a year which brought new insights and pleasures to members and non-members we attract to our events.

Our normal pattern of meetings took place but was supplemented by several other large-scale events. Thus the AGM in March, which included the routine election of officers and council members, was enclosed by two much more exciting events. In February we had a full house at …

Conference Report: Annual George Eliot Conference: Middlemarch, Institute Of English Studies, 22 November 2014, A.G. Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Only by combining papers on Romola and Felix Holt. did the 2013 George Eliot Conference manage to attract a tolerably-sized audience; no such problems for the 2014 Conference on Middlemarch. This excellent event was oversubscribed and had to be moved to the biggest room in the Institute of English Studies at the University of London. Barbara Hardy (Birkbeck, London and Swansea) and Louise Lee (Roehampton) yet again organized everything, bringing together a group of speakers who made us think about widely differing issues to do with Eliot's occasional uncertainty, Eliot and Mrs. Gaskell, the sex lives of young nineteenth-century women, …

Elizabeth Gaskell In Middlemarch: Timothy Cooper, The Judgement Of Solomon, And The Woman At The Window, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" Gaskell and Harriet Martineau were the only living novelists George Eliot praised, and very briefly. George Eliot and Gaskell never met but corresponded, admired each other's work, and in several books George Eliot unconsciously drew on details and characters from Gaskell novels.3 There are three important details in Middlemarch - which Gaskell never read because she died before its publication - deriving from Cousin Phillis, Wives and Daughters, and North and South.

Chapter 56 of Middlemarch is a meeting-point for history and the personal life. Caleb Garth's social confidence rings loud as he speaks …

Felix Holt: The Radical And The Gusset Of Cryptic Futurity, Rodney Stenning Edgecombe

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Most Victorian novels avail themselves of tidying codas in which the author projects the story into a future-turned-present and, counterpointed by wedding bells, maps out as close an approximation to the 'happily ever after' formula as the constraints of realism will allow. The locus classicus for this procedure occurs at the end of Martin Chuzzlewit:

And coming from a garden, Tom, bestrewn with flowers by children's hands, thy sister, little Ruth, as light of foot and heart as in old days, sits down beside thee. From the Present, and the Past, with which she is so tenderly entwined in all …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship- 2015 No. 46, Beryl Gray, John Rignall, Michael Davis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors ............................................................. .5

ARTICLES Jen Davis: Silas Marner: George Eliot's most Coleridgean Work? (Prize Essay)........................... 8

Barbara Hardy: Elizabeth Gaskell in Middlemarch: Timothy Cooper, the Judgement of Solomon, and the Woman at the Window................................. .16

Marianne Burton: How Much did Dorothea and Celia Know? Sexual Ignorance and Knowledge among Unmarried Girls in Middlemarch ........................................ 21

Kate Osborne: Mr Brooke's Thinking Organ...................................................... 29

John Rignall: Middlemarch and the Franco-Prussian War ............................... 38

Rodney Edgecombe: Felix Holt and the Gusset of Futurity ...............................46

Rosemary J. Burges Woods: A Life Reclaimed: George Evans (1766-1857) of Norbury, Winster, Derby and Belper …

How Much Did Dorothea And Celia Know? Sexual Ignornace And Knowledge Among Unmarried Girls In Middlemarch, Marianne Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Readers, in my experience, often make an assumption that unmarried girls in nineteenth century novels know nothing about sex, and this seems to be particularly the case regarding Dorothea Brooke. Had she only known about sex, so the adage goes, she would never have made her disastrous marriage choice. In this article I would like to examine this assumption in closer detail, looking not just at Dorothea and Celia, but also Rosamond Vincy and Mary Garth. I do not necessarily want to turn the notion on its head - I am not going to claim these girls were closet readers …

Japanese Branch Report- 2014, Eri Kobayashi

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On 29 November 2014, at the 18th General Meeting of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan, three papers on George Eliot's novels were read in the morning session. In the afternoon, a symposium on Eliot's poems was held and in the evening session a keynote speech was given by Professor Minoru Kawakita.

Chaired by Professor Kimitaka Hara (Nihon University), the morning session saw our first speaker, Masako Ishii (Kyoto University), discussing The Mill on the Floss from the standpoint of the destiny of Maggie Tulliver, especially in relation to her conflict with the socially restrictive norms of a provincial town …

Middlemarch And The Franco-Prussian War, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

By the early summer of 1870, George Eliot's work on Middlemarch, then consisting of the Vincy, Lydgate and Featherstone material, seemed to have stalled. In a journal entry of 20 May, George Eliot confessed that she was not hopeful about future work: 'I am languid, and my novel languishes to O'.1 And in fact the last references to Middlemarch in her journal date back to the previous September: on 11 September she had reached page 50 and the end of chapter 3, and then on the 22nd she maintained that she was stuck: 'im Stiche gerathen' (Journals, 138). There followed …

Mr. Booke's Thinking Organ, Kate Osborne

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A scene in Middlemarch's thirtieth chapter describes how the creative process can slip out of a writer's control.! A letter has arrived from Mr. Casaubon's estranged cousin, Will Ladislaw, asking whether Will may visit Casaubon and Dorothea at their home at Lowick. But Casaubon is gravely ill and Dorothea is so overwhelmed by her husband's illness and also by the thought of seeing Will that she cannot even read the letter. She asks her uncle, Mr. Brooke, to reply in her stead, 'to let Will know that Casaubon had been ill, and that his health would not allow the reception …

Note: Alcharisi And The Redundant Definite Article, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In critical and scholarly writing about Daniel Deronda, Daniel's mother, the Princess Leonora Halm-Eberstein, is all too often referred to as 'the Alcharisi'. In fact, the definite article is only used on one occasion in conjunction with her former stage name, when she tells Daniel that 'I was the Alcharisi you have heard of' (Ch. 51). The definite article simply specifies the particular Alcharisi she was. This is like, for instance, Maria Callas saying to someone on a first meeting 'I am the Callas you have heard of’. Just as this would not license anyone to refer to her thereafter …

Review Of Silas Marner. Read By Anna Bentinck. Naxos Complete Classics, Michael Slater

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Audiofile praises the 'pleasant cadence' of Anna Bentinck's voice in this recording of George Eliot's Wordsworthian masterpiece but, initially at least, I found her reading with its beautiful elocution sounded a bit too like Mrs. Miniver (contrast Eileen Atkins's sensitive reading of The Mill on The Floss for Cover to Cover). The pace, moreover, is generally rather slow and becomes slower still when Bentinck comes to voice rural speakers like Jem Bryce or the company at the Rainbow Inn, and almost unbearably slow in the case of Snell the landlord (the exception is Dowlas, the quarrelsome farrier, for whom she …

Review Of George Eliot And Money: Economics, Ethics And Literature, Dermot Coleman

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is an important book which fills a gap in George Eliot studies by exploring with impressive authority the novelist's handling of money and economics in her life and work, on the premise that, for her, the economic was an essential constituent of a 'comprehensive ethical understanding' (p. 8). The author is unusually well-qualified for an analysis of economic theory and practice, having co-founded a hedge fund in the late 1990s and retired from the business of investment management shortly before the financial crisis of 2008. He modestly disclaims any foreknowledge of that crisis but points out that his knowledge …

Review Of George Eliot, Poetess, Wendy S. Williams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The word 'poetess' is contentious. For some it rankles, because the diminution of 'poet' is generally considered gratuitous, patronizing and offensive. More often than not, it belittles women writers and their work. Others, however, argue that it is a useful word with which to describe poets belonging to the 'poetess tradition'. That particular tradition demands our attention, they argue, and requires detailed study. In 2003, Peggy Davis wrote that such work had only just begun but more biographical research was needed 'to establish a more prominent place for the poetess in particular and, more generally, women's poetry in literary criticism …

Review Of George Eliot's Feminism: 'The Right To Rebellion', June Skye Szirotny

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This luminous new work - dedicated to 'the millions of women deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by society's misogynist myths' - casts fresh light on George Eliot's feminism, which has often been the subject of controversy. 'I want to show' , says the author, 'that however ambivalent George Eliot was about practical matters, she strongly accepted most of the ideals of contemporary feminists […]. [S]he moves, through her works, from a repudiation of rebellion against conventional views of women to an acceptance of that rebellion in her later works; and, in each of her major works, …

Review Of Middlemarch: Critical Approaches To The Novel, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This book is a reprint of the 1967 edition published by the Athlone Press, one of '56 classic works of literary criticism' that Bloomsbury is reprinting from Athlone Press. This opportunity to revisit and reassess works that were highly regarded in their day should be welcomed and one hopes that the archives of other academic publishers may also be subject to similar treatment. It is not good for the health of literary criticism if significant studies of the past are not easily accessible to readers and critics in the present.

I remember reading this book fairly close to when it …

Review Of Sophie And The Sibyl: A Victorian Romance, Patricia Duncker

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's afterlife in adaptations of and sequels to her works is thin compared to those of such contemporaries as Dickens and the Brontes, and similarly the number of novels in which she appears as a character is meagre. True, as early as 1881 the characterization of Theresa in The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford was inspired by the friendship of its author, William Hale White, with Marian Evans in the 1850s, when both lived in publisher John Chapman's house at 142 Strand. Theresa is an idealized character, but recall White's corrective to George Eliot's Life ... by her husband 1. …

Review Of The Dog In The Dickensian Imagination, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The nineteenth century saw great changes in the way the English thought about animals. This wasn't only because of Darwinian revelations; it was also the result of increased urbanization and industrialization. Less frequently confined to the farmyard or the hunting kennels the dog, in particular, entered the daily life of humans as never before. It became a domestic pet, a fellow worker, the object of scientific enquiry; in today's accepted phrase, it became a member of 'a companion species', deserving understanding and concern. Dorothea Brooke, we might recall, was 'always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if …