Eliot's Angels : George Eliot, René Girard, and Mimetic Desire / Bernadette Waterman Ward.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ward, Bernadette Waterman, 1959- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Eliot, George, 1819-1880--Criticism and interpretation.

Eliot, George.

Girard, René, 1923-2015.

Girard, René.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 410 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2022]

Summary:

"In this innovative study, Bernadette Waterman Ward offers an original rereading of George Eliot's work through the lens of Rene Girard's theories of mimetic desire, violence, and the sacred. It is a fruitful mapping of a twentieth-century theorist onto a nineteenth-century novelist, revealing Eliot's understanding of imitative desire, rivalry, idol-making, and sacrificial victimization as critical elements of the social mechanism. While the unresolved tensions between Eliot's realism and her desire to believe in gradual social amelioration have often been studied, Ward is especially adept at articulating the details of such conflict in Eliot's early novels. In particular, Ward emphasized the clash between the ruthless mechanisms of mimetic desire and the idea of progress, or, as Eliot states, 'growing good;' Eliot's Christian sympathy for sacrificial victims against her general rejection of Christianity; and her resort to 'Nemesis' to evade the systemic injustice of the social sphere. The 'angels' in the title are characters who appear to offer a humanist way forward in the absence of religious belief. They are represented, in Girardian terms, as figures who try to rise above the snares of the mimetic machine to imitate Christ's self-sacrifice but are finally rendered ineffectual. Very few studies have tackled Eliot's short fiction and narrative poetry. Eliot's angels gives the short fiction its due."-- Back cover.

Contents:

Introduction

Mimesis and George Eliot's Fiction

Mimetic Anthropology: Eliot's Early Years

The Intellectual Development of Mary Ann Evans

George Eliot's Clerical Life

The Magic of Sympathy in Adam Bede

Hell in Other People: Mimesis and The Lifted Veil

Death and the River: The Mill on the Floss

The Interruptions: "Brother Jacob" and Silas Marner

Romola, Full-Fledged Mimetic Angel

Foiled Tragedy and Felix Holt

Myth and the Artist: The Spanish Gypsy, The Legend of Jubal, and Armgart

The Apocalyptic Angel of Middlemarch

Satanic Masquerade: Daniel Deronda

Mimesis in Theophrastus Such.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Waterman Ward, Bernadette Eliot's Angels

ISBN:

9780268202637

026820263X

9780268202668

0268202664

OCLC:

1319343329