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Presents a brief biography of George Eliot, critical views and plot summaries of four of her novels, and an index of themes and ideas.
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is not simply a critique of colonialism in the Congo; it is an examination of the human tendency toward self-endangering corruptibility. In this updated collection of critical essays, master literary scholar Harold Bloom suggests that this resonant work has taken on the power of myth. Book jacket.
Contents: I. Religion, evolution, and the novel; 1. 1888 and a look backwards; 2. George Eliot, Walter Pater, and Samuel Butler: three types of search; II. George Eliot: the search for a religious tradition; 1. George Eliot and science; 2. George Eliot and the "higher criticism"; 3. George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and tradition; III. Middlemarch: the balance of a progress; 1. "Heart" and "mind": two forms of progress; 2. "Modes of religion" (a); 3. Modes of religion" (b); 4. The "metaphysics" of Middlemarch; IV. Daniel Deronda: tradition as synthesis and salvation; 1. Middlemarch and the two "worlds" of Daniel Deronda; 2. Hebraism as nationality; 3. Hebraism as religious belief; V. Walter Pate...
Conrad's fiction is characterized by an enduring recourse to the performing arts for metaphor, allegory, symbol, and subject matter; however, this aspect of Conrad's non-dramatic works has only recently begun to come into its own among literary critics. In response to this seminal moment, Joseph Conrad and the Performing Arts offers an exciting, interdisciplinary forum for one of the most interesting and nascent areas of Conrad studies. Adopting a variety of theoretical approaches, the contributors examine major and neglected works within the context of the performing arts: cultural performance in Conrad's Malay fiction; Conrad's use and parody of popular traditions such as melodrama, Grand-Guignol, and commedia dell'arte; Conrad's engagement with the visual culture of early cinema; Conrad's interest in the motifs of shadowgraphy (shadow plays); Conrad's relationship to Shakespeare; and the enduring influence of opera on his work. Taken together, the essays provide, through solid scholarship and richly provocative speculation, new insight into Conrad's oeuvre, and invite future dialogue in the burgeoning field of Conrad and the performing arts.
Few stories capture the unique interplay of critical theory, mass media and public taste better than the story of the Spasmodics. These earnest, youthful and largely self-educated neo-Romantics hoped to become prophets who would influence literary society on a grand scale. From about 1850 to 1860, the Spasmodics successfully cast a long shadow over virtually every serious discussion of Victorian poetry. Many mid-nineteenth-century writers, including Tennyson, both Brownings and Matthew Arnold, were either adherents or outspoken detractors of the Spasmodic School. This work documents, in appropriate social contexts, the trajectory of the Spasmodic School in both its original incarnation and subsequent appraisals. Examining the various personalities and aesthetic principles that fashioned the movement, the author does not champion any particular critical stance or verdict. The scholarly apparatus cites a number of competing Victorianist interpretations, approaches and judgments with varying degrees of expertise.
George Eliot, 1819-1880, English novelist.
George Eliot has been widely praised both for the richness of her prose and the universality of her themes. In this compelling study, Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone goes beyond these traditional foci to examine the role of aggression in Eliot's fiction and to find its source in the author's unconscious sense of loss stemming from traumatic family separations and deaths during her childhood and adolescence. Johnstone demonstrates that Eliot's creative work was a constructive response to her sense of loss and that the repeating patterns in her novels reflect the process of release from her state of mourning for lost loved ones.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.
A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Joseph Conrad, Polish-British writer known as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. As a master prose stylist of nineteenth and twentieth-century modernism, Conrad’s works shaped and inspired English narrative fiction. Moreover, his novels’ anti-heroic characters inspired many other authors. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Joseph Conrad’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons they have stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work - Character Summaries - Plot Guides - Section and Chapter Overviews - Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.
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