George Eliot and Italy
Published on 11. February 1998
Book
Hardback
X, 243 pages
978-0-312-17651-8 (ISBN)
Description
This study considers George Eliot's novels in relation to Dante and to nineteenth-century Italian culture during the Italian national revival and shows how these helped shape her fiction. Thompson argues that Eliot was able to draw selectively on a powerful Risorgimento mythology of national regeneration and that her engagement with the work of Dante Alighieri increases steadily in her later novels, where the Divine Comedy becomes a sustaining metaphor for Eliot's meliorist vision and for her theme of moral growth through suffering.
Reviews / Votes
'[A] distinctive contribution to the burgeoning literature on nineteenth-century British enthusiasm for all things Italian...sure to be eagerly devoured accordingly.' - Literature & History
More details
Edition
1998 ed.
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
X, 243 p.
Dimensions
Height: 224 mm
Width: 147 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
494 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-312-17651-8 (9780312176518)
DOI
10.1057/9780230390188
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
ANDREW THOMPSON
Content
Acknowledgements - Abbreviations - Introduction - Dante, the Risorgimento and the British: the Italian Background - George Eliot's Contact with Italian Life and Culture 1840-1861 - George Eliot's Italian Exile in 'Mr Gilfil's Love Story' - George Eliot's Italian Mythmaking in Romola - Dante in Romola - Dante and Moral Choice in Felix Holt, The Radical - Italian Culture and Influences in Middlemarch - Gwendolen's 'other road': Dante in Daniel Deronda - Italian Poetry and Music in Daniel Deronda - Daniel Deronda, Italian Prophecy, Dante and George Eliot - Notes - Bibliography