Contents

Introduction

1

1.

Eliot’s Double Mirror

25

2.

Sappho’s Apple

35

3.

Lydgate Winces: Character and Realism

43

4.

Hypocrisy and the Judgment of Men

65

5.

Ladislaw

73

6.

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

89

7.

Epigraphy: Beginnings and Ends

105

Postscript: The Flute inside the Bell

119

Bibliography

137

List of Illustrations

145

Index

147