Abstract: As has been discussed, George Eliot's fictions bear witness to an ongoing tension and struggle between conflicting notions of History. This is situated within the context of wider Victorian debates concerning historiography and the representation of the historical past. The novels act as arenas within which these debates about history/History and historicity are played out. The ongoing and fundamental concern with the dynamics of historical process is just one manifestation of this. It is not just historical novels, the most self-consciously historical genre of nineteenth-century literature, in which notions of historicity are paramount. Indeed, it has been the intention of this study to illustrate the particular significance of Eliot's 'realist' novels as examples of a sustained attempt at a historiographical recreation of the historical past within a literary format. This explains, in part, the stress on Adam Bede, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda (among others) as opposed to the more self-consciously historicized Romola.
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot