George Eliot: Her Mind and Her Art

232 Pages·1948·9.339 MB·English

by  Joan Bennett

George
Eliot
By
JOAN
BENNETT
&
_CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Mrs Bennett finds in George Eliot’s work the Ee
beginnings of certain modern developments
of the novel, notably her respect for unity
of design, her interest in the complexity of
human personality and experience, and,
beneath a contemporary naturalism, a feeling
towards symbolic presentation.
Some of the moral problems implicit in
George Eliot’s character-studies and situations
beset the minds of the best of contempo-
raries. Some are still relevant. And an aware-
ness of moral problems—a novelist’s acceptance
of novel-writing as a serious and responsible
_job—is now characteristic of the best modern
fiction.
The first three chapters of Mrs Bennett’s
book are biographical and deal chiefly with the
formative years. ‘The remaining eight chapters,
_after defining in general George Eliot’s qualities
as a novelist, discuss the novels one by one, and
illustrate the deeper aspects of their author’s
outlook.
Mrs Bennett’s study will send people back
to the novels, to rediscover in a great Victorian
one who was also among the first of a new
generation of novelists.
“The examination is carried out with a
clarity and integrity of judgment, an acuteness
of choice in quotation and a wise balancing of
_ assertion and inference which, taken together,
form a model of critical method...Mrs
Bennett’s work. . .is a major piece of English
literary criticism.’ Spectator
“Readers of Joan Bennett’s works have
learned to expect from her three supreme
attributes—critical sensitivity, sound scholar- .
ship, and cogent prose. George Eliot lives up
to those expectations.’ Chicago) CAMSRIDGE
UNIVERSITY
PRESS
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27 MAR 1908

GEORGE ELIOT
Her Mind and Her Art
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GEORGE EL1OT
Her Mind and Her Art
BY
JOAN BENNETT
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1966
PUBLISHED BY
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First Edition 1948
Reprinted 1954
1962
First Paperback Edition 1962
Reprinted 1966
HATFIELD POLYTECHNIC
First print ed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge
Reprinted in Great Britain by Lowe & Brydone
(Printers) Ltd, London.
To
RALPH WRIGHT
“Tous ceux dont nous sommes les débiteurs spirituels
accompagnent notre pensée a travers toutes ces opérations.”’
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