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Middlemarch
First published in 1984. Although Middlemarch was extravagantly praised by Henry James, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, it is only in the last few decades that the novel has been widely recognised as George Eliot’s finest work, one of the greatest English novels, and one of the classic texts of nineteenth-century fiction.
The intellectual, religious and aesthetic background to Middlemarch are fully examined, with particular attention paid to Eliot’s key doctrines of fellow-feeling and the humanistic economy of salvation. Professor McSweeney also provides fresh and thought-provoking discussions of the role of the omniscient narrator, and of character and characterisation. This title will be of interest to students of literature.
The intellectual, religious and aesthetic background to Middlemarch are fully examined, with particular attention paid to Eliot’s key doctrines of fellow-feeling and the humanistic economy of salvation. Professor McSweeney also provides fresh and thought-provoking discussions of the role of the omniscient narrator, and of character and characterisation. This title will be of interest to students of literature.
180 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 25, 2015
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August 27, 2022A great concise companion to Middlemarch.
McSweeney covers virtually every side of the novel -- influences on Eliot, characters & characterisation, history, the narrator, and critical reception.
Aside from the obvious usefulness of this all-encompassing approach to students of Middlemarch, McSweeney is to be commended for his call for a return to a more Victorian approach to criticism with a heavier focus on characters as ends in themselves rather than instruments for the exposition of abstract themes. Seemingly answering his own call, (while the themes and general ideas of the novel are addressed adequately) the author's emphasis is on the characters and Eliot's handling of them, with a whole separate chapter devoted to Dorothea, which, appropriately, concerns itself chiefly not with Dorothea's relation to the themes of a gifted individual's relation to modern society or the "workings of the humanistic economy of salvation", but with "the common yearning of womanhood".
Another notable strength is the supremely useful overview of Middlemarch's critical history.
McSweeney covers virtually every side of the novel -- influences on Eliot, characters & characterisation, history, the narrator, and critical reception.
Aside from the obvious usefulness of this all-encompassing approach to students of Middlemarch, McSweeney is to be commended for his call for a return to a more Victorian approach to criticism with a heavier focus on characters as ends in themselves rather than instruments for the exposition of abstract themes. Seemingly answering his own call, (while the themes and general ideas of the novel are addressed adequately) the author's emphasis is on the characters and Eliot's handling of them, with a whole separate chapter devoted to Dorothea, which, appropriately, concerns itself chiefly not with Dorothea's relation to the themes of a gifted individual's relation to modern society or the "workings of the humanistic economy of salvation", but with "the common yearning of womanhood".
Another notable strength is the supremely useful overview of Middlemarch's critical history.
Displaying 1 of 1 review