This book explores the interrelations between communal memory and the sense of history in George Eliot's novels by focusing on issues such as memory and narrative, memory and oblivion, memory and time, and the interactions between personal, communal and national memories. Hao Li offers a fresh critical reading informed by major nineteenth-century theories and argues for a reappraisal of George Eliot's complex understanding of the dialects of memory and history, an understanding that both integrates and transcends the positivist and the romantic-historical approaches of her time.

Autorentext

Hao Li is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto.

Inhalt

Note on Editions, Abbreviations, References and Italics List of Abbreviations Introduction: Memory, History, and George Eliot Narrative and 'Immovable Roots': Scenes of Clerical Life and Adam Bede Sources of the Self and Moral Agency in The Lifted Veil, The Mill on the Floss , and Silas Marner The Moment in History: The Temporal Sense of Emotional Development in Romola Determination and Moral Reform in Felix Holt The Language of Secular Religion in Middlemarch National Consciousness in Daniel Deronda Historical Consciousness and the Intellectual Notes Index