Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Comparative Literature, December 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-189). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of English, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Dec. 3, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-03, Section: A, page: 1010. Chair: Nicholas Mark Williams.

The thesis is a comparative study of George Eliot and George Sand. Numerous references to Sand in Eliot's correspondence, as well as in Lewes's criticism, show that the link between the two female authors was more profound than suspected. Lewes and Sand met and corresponded for a few years and his art theory is greatly indebted to Sand's novels. Sand also exerted a profound influence on Eliot's intellectual and artistic development before Eliot met Lewes. Sand was her "divinity." However, it is Lewes who encouraged Eliot to follow in Sand's footsteps. The thesis is thematic and compares first the impact of Sand's religious novels such as Spiridion and Lélia. Then their social thought is examined, with novels such as Le pêche de Monsieur Antoine and Felix Holt, the Radical. The third part deals with their conception of art, with special attention to the doctrine of Realism and to Sand's rustic novels. Their conception of women is also examined as well as their position on the question of woman's liberation. Finally, I compare their views of the complex relationship between femaleness and literature, in the light of recent feminist criticism.

In an attempt to explain the discrepancy between the intellectual and imaginative elements in George Eliot's art, her version of the pastoral in Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner is examined. Based on the Warwickshire countryside of her childhood and on the Wordsworthian notion of childhood, her pastoral is the environmental correlative to the spiritual development of a character according to Ludwig Feuerbach's "Religion of Humanity." The pastoral is used to portray man's initial happy state* that is informed by his own egoism and limited viewpoint. The pastoral is also used to portray a kind of second Eden that is inherited by those men who have achieved a wider vision in the "Religion of Humanity." At the same time, the pastoral has certain unconscious associations for George Eliot which produce an imaginative pattern that is different from the one she consciously intends. The appeal of a sense of womb-like enclosedness generated by her pastoral and her apprehension of the world of intellectual and emotional maturity that lies beyond the infantile milieu create an imaginative pattern of psychological regression. The chief character within this pattern (who may also be the chief character within the intentional pattern) finally "dies" in the fatal attempt to remain within the infantile realm. At this low ebb in the imaginative pattern, the new celebrant in the "Religion of Humanity," having achieved an understanding of the not-self, is about to enter his new and shining second Eden. Thus, the enclosed and narrow point of view that corresponds to the initial stage in man's spiritual development is never imaginatively abandoned. Adam Bede is the chief inhabitant of Hayslope which shares his limited and self-centred outlook. The malfeasance of Adam's fiancee, Hetty Sorrel, initiates Adam and Hayslope into new awareness. Finally, Adam returns to an apocalyptic Hayslope with his superior Eve, Dinah Morris. Hetty Sorrel is the focus of the imaginative interest in the novel. Although the child-like Hetty initially seeks to quit the security of the Hall Farm, she later "dies"in the attempt to return. Her "death" and Adam's initiation into the "Religion of Humanity" are almost simultaneous. Through suffering and resignation, Maggie Tulliver learns to imitate Christ according to the precepts of Thomas a Kempis (and Ludwig Feuerbach). Her reward, in death, is a second childhood Eden which is much superior to the first one which was often shaken with egoistic squabbles. Imaginatively, Maggie's resignation takes on the form of a fatal timidity towards life and an inability to quit the infantile relationships within the family circle. She "dies" at the end of a regressive journey into the self at the same point where she receives the cross in recognition of her relationship and duty to others. In Silas Marner, the intellectual and imaginative elements are more closely aligned. Silas "dies" at the conclusion of a regressive journey into the self which also corresponds to his social withdrawl and spiritual death. Similarly, he is reborn and grows into an awareness of a beautiful pastoral world as his vision is widened to include the love and sympathy of fellow human beings. After Silas Marner, George Eliot seldom returned to the pastoral material she developed in the trilogy. Intellectually, her pastoral did not lend itself to a more critical examination of ideas and beliefs while imaginatively, it had become ultimately uncomfortable and unsatisfactory. That she had outgrown her pastoral and that she was unable to replace it with another imaginative system help explain her artistic sterility during the eighteen-sixties. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This study examines the practical and political implications of sympathy as a mode of achieving the intercommunicative relationship between the self and the other, emphasizing the significance of subjective agency not simply guided by the imperative category of morality but mainly enacted by a hybrid of discourses through the interaction between the two entities. Scenes of Clerical Life, Eliot's first fictional narrative on illuminating the intertwining relation of religion to secular conditions of life, reveals that the essence of religion is the practice of love between the self and the other derived from sympathy and invoked by their dialogic discourses of confession which enable them to foster the communality, on the grounds that the alterity implicated in the narrative of the other summons and re-historicizes the narrative of the subject's traumatic event in the past. Romola, Eliot's historical novel, highlights the performativity of subject which, on the one hand, locates Romola outside the social frame of domination and appropriation as a way of challenging the universalizing discourses of morality and duty sanctioned by the patriarchal ideology of norms, religion, and marriage. On the other hand, the heroine re-engages herself inside the social structure as a response to other's need for help by substantiating her compassion for others in action. Felix Holt, the Radical, Eliot's political and industrial novel, investigates the limits of moral discourse and instrumental reason. Esther employs her strategy of hybridizing her aesthetic and moral tastes in order to debilitate masculine desires for moral inculcation and material calculation. Esther reinvigorates her subjectivity by simultaneously internalizing and externalizing a hybrid of tastes. In effect, the empowerment of her subjectivity is designed not only to provide others with substantial help from the promptings of her sympathy for them, but also to fulfill her romantic plot of marriage.

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Zugl.: Leeds, University, Diss.

Zugleich: Diss. Kiel, 2007. / Register. Literaturverz.

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