ENG 346: 19th-Century Literature: Victorian

This volume of specially-commissioned essays provides accessible introductions to all aspects of George Eliot's writing by some of the most distinguished new and established scholars and critics of Victorian literature. The essays are comprehensive, scholarly and lucidly written, and at the same time offer original insights into the work of one of the most important Victorian novelists, and into her complex and often scandalous career.

In this new study, Pauline Nestor offers a challenging reassessment of Eliot's contribution to the critical debates, both of her age and of her own era. In particular, she examines the author's literary expolration of ethics, especially in relation to the negotiation of difference. Nestor argues compellingly that, through a reading of their sophisticated drama of otherness, Eliot's novels can be seen as freshly relevant to contemporary theoretical debates in feminism, moral philosophy, post-colonial studies and psychoanalysis.

In Rereading George Eliot, noted Eliot scholar Bernard Paris explores how we become different interpreters of literature as we undergo psychological change. Having lost his earlier enthusiasm for her "Religion of Humanity," he now appreciates the psychological intuitions that are embodied in her brilliant portraits of characters and relationships.

This study focuses on the religious part of George Eliot's life and writings. Hodgson finds her religious vision directly germane to contemporary theological and religious reconstruction.

Bodenheimer defines the personal paradoxes that helped to shape Eliot's fictional characters and narrative style. Bodenheimer revisits pivotal episodes in Mary Ann Evans's life and career, including the "Holy War" through which she asserted her youthful religious skepticism; her decision to elope with the married writer George Henry Lewes; and her marriage with John Cross after Lewes's death. Bodenheimer also discusses the rumor campaign that led to the discovery that "George Eliot" was a woman.

This biography of Eliot sets her vividly in the political, social and religious context of the time. Rosemary Ashton explores the central paradox in Eliot's life and work: the need both to conform and rebel.