Movement And Vision In George Eliots Novels

The Ethical Vision of George Eliot is one of the first monographs devoted entirely to the ethical thought of George Eliot, a profoundly significant, influential figure not only in nineteenth-century English and European literature, nineteenth-century women’s writing, the history of the novel, and Victorian intellectual culture, but also in the field of literary ethics. Ethics are a predominant theme in Eliot’s fictional and non-fictional writings. Her ethical insights and ideas are a defining element of her greatness as an artist and novelist. Through meticulous close readings of Eliot’s fiction, essays, and letters, The Ethical Vision of George Eliot presents an original, complex definition of her ethical vision as she developed it over the course of her career. It examines major novels like Adam Bede, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda; many of Eliot’s most significant essays; and devotes two entire chapters to Eliot’s final book Impressions of Theophrastus Such, an idiosyncratic collection of character sketches that Eliot scholars have heretofore generally overlooked or ignored. The Ethical Vision of George Eliot demonstrates that Eliot defined her ethical vision alternately in terms of revealing and strengthening a fundamental human communion that links us to other persons, however different and remote from ourselves; and in terms of recognizing and respecting the otherness of other persons, and of the universe more generally, from ourselves. Over the course of her career, Eliot increasingly transitions from the former towards the latter imperative, but she also considerably complicates her conception of otherness, and of what it means to be ethically responsible to it.

Study on the works of George Eliot, 1819-1880, English novelist.

This study shows how George Eliot, a leader in the nineteenth-century intellectual world of Darwin and the Industrial Revolution, wrestled in her early novels with the esthetic problems of reconciling her art and her philosophy. Attempting in her fiction to reproduce the real, temporal world she lived in, George Eliot also tried to reassure herself and her readers that their godless modern world still operated according to higher moral laws of justice and perfectibility. U. C. Knoepflmacher examines here for the first time in sequence George Eliot's development of increasingly sophisticated forms of fiction in her efforts to reconcile the two conflicting orientations in her thought. We see this popular novelist as she progressed artistically from the flawed "Amos Barton" in 1857 up to the balance she achieved in Silas Marner in 1861. And we discover her in the context of her literary antecedents and surrounding in a way that brings many new affiliations to light, particularly the connection of her novels to the writings of Milton, the Romantic poets, and her contemporaries Arnold and Carlyle. Professor Knoepflmacher thoroughly discusses each work in George Eliot's first stage, brining new attention to minor works like "The Lifted Veil" and Scenes of Clerical Life and fresh insights to such well known works as Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

Carpenter discusses apocalytptic narrative schemes in Romola, Adam Bede, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, and The Legend of Jubal. In the context of nineteenth-century British interpretation of the prophesies, this study reveals an unsuspected visionary poetics in Eliot's writings and demonstrates that her later works rewrite Protestant apocalyptics in both romantic and satiric styles, suggesting a new approach to Victorian narrative form. Originally published in 1986. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This comprehensive guide to one of the most successful yet controversial writers of the Victorian period introduces the contexts and many interpretations of her work, from publication to the present. & nbsp.

A collection of critical essays discussing the structure, themes, and subject matter of Silas Marner by George Eliot.