Hi all! George Eliot is running in 2023/4. Please email me if you have any questions or concerns.
Convenor - Dr Michael Meeuwis
George Eliot’s many readers know of her interest in presenting something like a vision of a society: an account of how individuals function within a wider social pattern, figured variously as a web or a labyrinth. This module offers the opportunity for a slow reading of all of Eliot's major fiction.In a different academic era, we'd call this something like "George Eliot's vision of a society." In our current moment, I'm interested in how nineteenth-century literature invented our categories of social analysis—and indeed how nineteenth-century literature might give us new, or at least still-useful, ideas for doing so. I'm also interested in how George Eliot fits into our understanding of the contemporary Midlands.
Our focus throughout is going to be
Assessment:
Intermediate Year:
100% assessed (2 x 3500-word essay)
Final Year:
100% assessed (2 x 4000-word essay)
Essays are independent research projects developed in consultation your module tutor.
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17. Outline Syllabus
Term One:
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Week
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Primary Text
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Secondary Reading
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1:
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Nancy Henry, ed., The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot (all essays, but our focus will be on the Levine introduction)
George Eliot, "Amos Barton," from Scenes of Clerical Life
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2:
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Adam Bede
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Strauss, The Life of Jesus, trans. George Eliot (Byatt and Warren 447-458)
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3:
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Adam Bede
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Herbert, Christopher. “Preachers and the Schemes of Nature in Adam Bede.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 29.4 (March 1975): 412–427. |
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4:
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Adam Bede
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Horowitz, Evan. “George Eliot: The Conservative.” Victorian Studies 49.1 (Autumn
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5:
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The Mill on the Floss
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David Caroll, "Introduction: a working hypothesis"; optional, "The Mill on the Floss: growing up in St Ogg's"
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7:
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The Mill on the Floss
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Nicholas Dames, "Mass Reading and Physiological Novel Theory" (optional: "Melodies for the Forgetful: Eliot, Wagner, and Duration") |
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8:
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The Mill on the Floss
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Sally Shuttleworth, "Natural History as Social Vision," |
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9:
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Silas Marner
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Rae Greiner, "Not Getting to Know You: Sympathetic Detachment" and optional "Introduction: Thinking of You Thinking of Me"
Jaffe, Audrey, Scenes of Sympathy
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10:
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Silas Marner
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George Levine, "Introduction," The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot (2d end) |
Term Two:
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Week
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Primary
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Secondary Reading
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1:
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Romola, introduction and chapters 1-3
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2:
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Felix Holt
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Peter Brooks, "George Eliot's Delicate Vessels," in Realist Vision
Hollis, Hilda. “Felix Holt: Independent Spokesman or Eliot’s Mouthpiece?” ELH 68.1 (Spring 2001): 155–177.
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3:
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Felix Holt
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Jaffe, Audrey, "Introduction" (1-26) and "Consenting to the Fact" (121-58) in Scenes of Sympathy |
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4:
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Middlemarch
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Gillian Beer, Darwin's Plots, "George Eliot: Middlemarch"
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5:
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Middlemarch
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J. Hillis Miller, “Optic and Semiotic in Middlemarch.” In The Worlds of Victorian Fiction. Ed. Jerome H. Buckley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975, pp. 125–145.
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7:
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Middlemarch
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The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction: Social Discourse and Narrative
Form, 1832–1867. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. |
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8:
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Daniel Deronda
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Brilmyer, S. Pearl. “‘The Natural History of My Inward Self’: Sensing Character in
George Eliot’s Impressions of Theophrastus Such.” PMLA 129.1 (2014): 35–51. |
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9:
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Daniel Deronda
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Sebastian Lecourt, "History's Second-hand Bookshop," in Cultivating Belief
Wilt, Judith. “‘He would come back’: The Fathers of Daughters in Daniel Deronda.”
Nineteenth-Century Literature 42.3 (December 1987): 313–338.
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10:
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Daniel Deronda
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Agathocleous, Tanya, and Jason R. Rudy (eds.). “Victorian Cosmpolitanisms: Introduction.” Victorian Literature and Culture 38.2 (2010): 389–397.
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