George Eliot: A Centenary Tribute PDF
Preview George Eliot: A Centenary Tribute
GEORGE ELIOT: A CENTENARY TRIBUTE Also by Gordon S. Haight THE GEORGE ELIOT LETTERS (9 vols) (editor) GEORGE ELIOT: A BIOGRAPHY GEORGE ELIOT A Centenary Tribute Edited by Gordon S. Haight and Rosemary T. V anArsdel M MACMILLAN © Gordon S. Haight and Rosemary T. VanArsdel 1982 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First edition 1982 Reprinted 1985 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-05971-3 ISBN 978-1-349-05969-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05969-0 Contents Preface vu Notes on the Contributors vm I George Eliot's Bastards Gordon S. Haight I 2 George Eliot's Language of the Sense Juliet McMaster II 3 A Meredithian Glance at Gwendolen Harleth Elizabeth A. Daniels 28 4 Middlemarch and the New Humanity Ruth apRoberts 38 5 'Stealthy Convergence' in Middlemarch Robert B. Heilman 47 6 Antique Gems from Romola to Daniel Deronda Joseph Wiesenfarth 55 7 The Choir Invisible: The Poetics of Humanist Piety Martha S. Vogeler 64 8 How George Eliot's People Think Jacob Korg 82 9 George Eliot and the Russians Miriam H. Berlz'n 90 I 0 George Eliot and her Biographers Ira Bruce Nadel I07 II The Ambivalence of The Mill on the Floss IanAdam I22 I2 The Unity of Felix Holt Florence Sandler I37 I3 'This Petty Medium': In the Middle of Middlemarch John F. Hulcoop I 53 Index I67 v Pref3:ce During the year 1980 many observances of the centenary of George Eliot's death paid tribute to her life and works. Sponsored by the George Eliot Fellowship of Great Britain, a stone was placed to her memory in Poets' Comer of Westminster Abbey, rectifying a century-old injustice. In his address Professor Haight declared that in her hands 'the novel, too long a trivial pastime, became a compelling moral force, which has established George Eliot firmly at the heart of the Great Tradition with Jane Austen and Henry James'. Another observance was the George Eliot Centennial Confer ence held 10-12 April on the campus of the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington. Scholars gathered there from all over the world to hear a group of twenty-six papers presented in George Eliot's honour. The selection offered in this volume will stand as a lasting memorial to her greatness. Limitation of space prevented the inclusion of papers by Henry Alley, Anthony Brad ley, James Caron, Mary Coney, Linda Costic, Colin Henderson, David Leon Higdon, Clinton Machann, Meri-Jane R. Mintz, Vic tor Neufeldt, Ellin Ringler, William Scheuerle, andj. Don Vann. In acknowledging the part played by the University of Puget Sound as host of this Conference, the editors wish particularly to note the moneys contributed by the Enrichment Committee of the University, the Endowment Enrichment Fund of the Univer sity's Board of Trustees, and the Washington Commission for the Humanities. A Faculty Research Grant helped with the prepara tion of the manuscript of this volume. The editors wish also to express their gratitude for the extraordinary personal support of University President Philip M. Phibbs and his wife Gwen. And finally they offer warm thanks for the invaluable technical and re search assistance rendered throughout the Conference and in the preparation of this manuscript by the Conference Secretary Eliza beth R. Danz. GoRDON S. HAIGHT RosEMARY T. VANARSDEL Vll Notes on the Contributors IAN ADAM is the author of George Eliot, editor of This Particular Web: Essays on Middlemarch, and of Ariel: A Review of International English Literature. He has published numerous articles on George Eliot and is Professor of English at the Uni versity of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. RUTH apROBERTS, author of Trollope, Artist and Moralist, and the chapter 'Trollope' in Victorian Fiction: A Guide to Research, has published widely in scholarly journals. She is Professor of English, University of California, Riverside. MIRIAM H. BERLIN has served as Associate and now Visitor at the Russian Research Center, Harvard University. For many years she was a member of the History Department, Wellesley College, and is now Lecturer for the Radcliffe Seminars Program and the Harvard University Slavic Department. She has been Research Director for the Study Committee on Universities and Human Rights of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. ELIZABETH A. DANIELS, a member of the Board of Directors of theRe search Society for Victorian Periodicals, is the author of Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary, as well as many scholarly articles on Victorian literature. She is Professor of English at Vassar College. GORDON s. HAIGHT, Emily Sanford Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Yale University, is the editor of The George Eliot Letters and author of George Eliot: A Biography, which received the James Tait Black prize, the Heinemann award of the Royal Society of Literature, the award of the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Van Wyck Brooks award. He edited The Mill on the Floss, the first volume of The Clarendon Edition of the Novels of George Eliot, of which he is Vlll Notes on the Contributors lX general editor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. ROBERT B. HEILMAN, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Washington, widely known as a critic and scholar, has pub lished numerous articles and books on Shakespeare, the drama, and the nature of tragedy, including Tragedy and Melodrama: Versions of Existence and The Ways of the World: Comedy and Society, which won the Christian Gauss Prize of Phi Beta Kappa in 1979. He has edited works by Swift, Conrad, Hardy, and George Eliot, and published articles on Austen, Hardy, Trollope, Waugh, and Welty. JOHN F. HULcooP, editor of The Selected Poems of Phyllis Webb, 1954-65, has also published Three Ring Circus Songs, as well as many articles in scholarly journals. His poetry has appeared in all the major Canadian journals, and he is Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. JACOB KORG, Professor of English at the University of Washington, specialises in Victorian and modern literature, and is an authority on the works of George Gissing. He is the author of George Gissing: A Critical Biography, and has written on Dickens, Mere dith, Browning, Hopkins and other Victorians. His recent book, Language in Modern Literature, is a study of twentieth-century experimental writing. JULIET McMASTER is the author of Thackeray: The Major Novels, Jane Austen on Love, and Trollope's Palliser Novels: Theme and Pattern, and co-author with Rowland McMaster of The Novel from Sterne to james. She is Professor of English at the University of Alberta, and has recently been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. IRA BRUCE NADEL, co-editor and contributor to Victorian Artists and the City (1980), combines interests in Victorian prose and prose fiction with a special interest in biography of the Victorian period. He is widely published in journals of Victorian studies and is Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. X Notes on the Contributors FLORENCE SANDLER, a native of New Zealand, is Professor of English at the University of Puget Sound, where she combines interest in seventeenth-century scholarship with Blake and the Victorians. Shr has contributed to Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose of john Milton ( ed. Lieb and Shawcross) and to Essential Articles: George Herbert (ed. Roberts). Her work on Dickens, Vaughan, Fuller, and Blake has appeared in numerous scholarly journals. ROSEMARY T. vanARSDEL, Professor of English at the University of Puget Sound, is co-editor of Victorian Periodicals: A Guide to Research and assistant editor of The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900. Her research on Victorian periodicals has appeared in numerous scholarly journals. MARTHA s. VOGELER is Professor of English at California State Uni versity, Fullerton. She has published articles on Positivism, edited the centenary republication of Frederic Harrison's Order and Progress, and is currently preparing a full-scale biography, Fre deric Harrison: the Vocations of a Positivist. JOSEPH WIESENFARTH, Professor of English at the University of Wis consin, Madison, is the author of Henry james and the Dramatic Analogy; The Errand of Form: An Assay ofJ ane Austen's Art, George Eliot's Mythmaking, and George Elz"ot: A Writer's Notebook, 1854-1879, based on a manuscript owned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
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