Middlemarch: Epigraphs and Mirrors - cover image

Copyright

Adam Roberts

Published On

2021-03-31

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80064-158-7
Hardback978-1-80064-159-4
PDF978-1-80064-160-0
HTML978-1-80064-647-6
XML978-1-80064-163-1
EPUB978-1-80064-161-7
MOBI978-1-80064-162-4

Language

  • English

Print Length

160 pages (vi+154)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 9 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.35" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 11 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.44" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback524g (18.48oz)
Hardback899g (31.71oz)

Media

Illustrations3

OCLC Number

1245925968

LCCN

2020447280

BIC

  • D
  • DSBF

BISAC

  • FIC027070
  • LIT004120
  • LIT000000
  • LIT024040

LCC

  • PN6081

Keywords

  • Middlemarch
  • George Eliot
  • epigraph
  • Casaubon
  • Adam Roberts

Middlemarch

Epigraphs and Mirrors

In Middlemarch, George Eliot draws a character passionately absorbed by abstruse allusion and obscure epigraphs. Casaubon’s obsession is a cautionary tale, but Adam Roberts nonetheless sees in him an invitation to take Eliot’s use of epigraphy and allusion seriously, and this book is an attempt to do just that.

Roberts considers the epigraph as a mirror that refracts the meaning of a text, and that thus carries important resonances for the way Eliot’s novels generate their meanings. In this lively and provoking study, he tracks down those allusions and quotations that have hitherto gone unidentified by scholars, examining their relationship to the text in which they sit to unfurl a broader argument about the novel – both this novel, and the novel form itself.

Middlemarch: Epigraphs and Mirrors is both a study of George Eliot and a meditation on the textuality of fiction. It is essential reading for specialists and students of George Eliot, the nineteenth century novel, and intertextuality. It will also richly reward anyone who has ever taken pleasure in Middlemarch.

Endorsements

A study of epigraphs and allusions in Middlemarch might seem uncomfortably close to Mr Casaubon’s own pedantic and unprofitable research in the novel, but Adam Roberts is happily no Casaubon, and his lively scholarship, informed by a knowledge of languages that comes close to George Eliot’s, is impressive in the breadth of its concerns and the variety of fascinating insights it offers. Using epigraphs as a lens to open up new vistas, this study explores a wide range of connections – with concepts such as Brownian motion and with writers such as Scott, Pascal, George Sand, Sappho and Tolstoy – and, moving freely between epigraphs and the main text, it succeeds in throwing fresh light on the manifold ‘middleness’ of Middlemarch and the richness and sophistication of George Eliot’s realism.

John Rignall

Reader Emeritus, University of Warwick

Contents

1. Eliot’s Double Mirror

(pp. 25–34)
  • Adam Roberts

2. Sappho’s Apple

(pp. 35–42)
  • Adam Roberts

3. Lydgate Winces: Character and Realism

(pp. 43–64)
  • Adam Roberts

4. Hypocrisy and the Judgment of Men

(pp. 65–72)
  • Adam Roberts

5. Ladislaw

(pp. 73–88)
  • Adam Roberts

6. Myth, Middlemarch and the Mill: Out in Mid-Sea

(pp. 89–104)
  • Adam Roberts

7. Epigraphy: Beginnings and Ends

(pp. 105–118)
  • Adam Roberts

Postscript: The Flute inside the Bell

(pp. 119–136)
  • Adam Roberts

Introduction

(pp. 1–24)
  • Adam Roberts