George Eliot’s Middlemarch

Virginia Woolf famously called George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-1872) “one of the few English novels written for grownup people.” One of the aspects of the novel that makes it “grownup” is the constant negotiation with conflict and community it presents. The characters consistently grapple with feelings of otherness as they strive to communicate and grow. This does not lead to happy resolutions for all, but it does provide a wealth of cultural encounters; through these Eliot can offer a philosophical commentary on her own society and expose the failures and struggles she sees in her present day.

In this talk, Clare Broome Saunders will explore these cultural encounters in Middlemarch, focusing particularly on the ways in which Eliot uses both recent history and medieval hagiography to illustrate her ideas.

This event is sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project and Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. It is part of the year-long series, Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference.

Online. Free and open to all. Registration is required.

Clare Broome Saunders is the senior tutor at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford and a member of the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford. She is one of the United Kingdom’s leading contributors in discussions of nineteenth-century medievalism, and her research interests include women’s poetry and European travel writers. Her books include Louisa Stuart Costello: A 19th Century Writing Life (2015), Women, Travel Writing, and Truth(2014), and Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism (2009). Forthcoming publications include work on the connections between Elizabeth Barrett Browning and William Blake, and a book on political medievalism in the long nineteenth century.

Upcoming events in this series

Dr Neil Garrod
4pm, Mon, 18 Nov: On A Month in the Country

Dr Anthony O’Mahony
4pm, Mon, 25 Nov: On The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Contact:
Las Casas Institute with Georgetown University
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk