George Eliot's Dialogue with John MiltonIn George Eliot's Dialogue with John Milton, Anna K. Nardo details how Eliot reimagined Milton's life and art to write epic novels for an age of unbelief. Nardo demonstrates that Eliot directly engaged Milton's poetry, prose, and the well-known legends of his life--transposing, reframing, regendering, and thus testing both the stories told about Milton and the stories Milton told.In Romola and Middlemarch, Eliot's contemporary audience would immediately have recognized in her heroines' stories the plight of Milton's daughters--enlisted as readers for a blind poet and scholar. By evoking the well-known legends of Milton's life in these novels, Eliot places Milton in dialogue with himself in order to imagine new possibilities. In Romola, a daughter uses what she has learned from one Miltonic father to liberate herself from subjugation to the other, and in Middlemarch, Eliot tests Milton's fundamental assumptions about gender and knowledge by evoking, then reframing scenes from his life and his epic Paradise Lost.This strategy for establishing a dialogue with authoritative discourse, which Eliot evolved in midcareer, is complex and elegant. Eliot's first full-length novel, however, poses a direct challenge to the pastoral assumptions of Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso"--a challenge that she extends to the theology of Milton's epic of a lost pastoral paradise. In Adam Bede, Eliot summons Miltonic patterns into situations that expose their absence, leaving not the denial of these patterns, but their echo. Having separated Milton's characteristic patterns of choice from his theology, Eliot then began to experiment with transformations of the Miltonic hero. By reimagining the story of the virtuous Lady of Comus, Eliot discovers the possibility for a heroic deliverance for the beleaguered heroine of The Mill on the Floss. In Felix Holt and Daniel Deronda, she first characterizes a male protagonist as a Miltonic hero, and then confronts her female, rather than her male, protagonist with the trials faced by that hero.In these complex transformations, we see Eliot's strenuous and lifelong dialogue with Milton--a dialogue that liberated Eliot's imagination. The author shows that Eliot opens the authoritative discourse by and about Milton to new possibilities envisioned by a towering female intellect. Scholars of both seventeenth-century and nineteenth-century British literature, especially those specializing in Eliot or Milton, as well as theorists engaged in the ongoing debate about intertextuality, will find this book of great interest. |
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Page 191
... future and choose lives that move " with the larger sweep of the world's forces " ( FH , 161 ) . Thus their choices produce the novel's comic affirmation of com- munity and ongoing life . For Mrs. Transome , however , " the great story ...
... future and choose lives that move " with the larger sweep of the world's forces " ( FH , 161 ) . Thus their choices produce the novel's comic affirmation of com- munity and ongoing life . For Mrs. Transome , however , " the great story ...
Page 192
... future history to fallen Adam , explain the typological significance of the Jewish ceremonial law of sacrifice : Therefore was Law given [ the Jews ] to evince Thir natural pravity , by stirring up Sin against Law to fight ; then when ...
... future history to fallen Adam , explain the typological significance of the Jewish ceremonial law of sacrifice : Therefore was Law given [ the Jews ] to evince Thir natural pravity , by stirring up Sin against Law to fight ; then when ...
Page 196
... future by sending her to school so that she may support herself when he dies . But Eliot reverses the disinheriting of Milton's daughters by making Esther into an heiress . In Rufus , Eliot revises the legendary image of Mil- ton as ...
... future by sending her to school so that she may support herself when he dies . But Eliot reverses the disinheriting of Milton's daughters by making Esther into an heiress . In Rufus , Eliot revises the legendary image of Mil- ton as ...
Contents
Testing the Ways of Milton in Middlemarch | 111 |
Eliots Challenge to Milton in Adam Bede | 135 |
The Freedom of My Mind | 166 |
Copyright | |
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action Adam Adam Bede Adam's allusion angel argues beauty become blind bring called Casaubon characters choice chooses Christian comes Comus created critics Daniel Deronda daughters death describes dialogue domestic Dorothea early epic Esther evil experience eyes face fails father feels Felix Felix Holt final follows force future gaze George Eliot Gwendolen heroine Hetty hope human husband ideal imagines ironic Italy John Milton knowledge Lady language later lead learned live look Lydgate Maggie Maggie's marriage married Mary meet Middlemarch Mill Milton mind narrator never novel offers once opening Paradise Lost passion pastoral pattern poet poetry question reader reading rejects represents Romola Samson Satan scene seeks seems soul spirit story struggle temptation things thought tion trial truth turn vision Whereas wife woman women writing young