The Writings of George Eliot

Module code: EN3166

In this module you will study some of the major novels of George Eliot, alongside a selection of Eliot's critical writings, poems, and letters, and her short story 'The Lifted Veil'. In weekly seminars, we will study Eliot's writings chronologically in order to track her development as both a creative and critical writer. We will examine these texts in the context of Eliot's participation in the political, cultural, and scientific developments of her time and of her own contribution to those discourses.

Some of the aspects we will examine are representations of city and country, industrialisation, female desire and sexuality, the figure of the artist, notions of responsibility and community, humanism and religion, and the importance of memory and the past. 

As well as closely studying individual texts, we will consider the broader issues of how Eliot's work contributed to the development of the Victorian novel, and how she negotiated her cultural position as both a woman and a leading novelist and intellectual. 

Topics covered

• Scenes of Clerical Life
• Adam Bede
• The Mill on the Floss
• Felix Holt
• Middlemarch
• 'The Lifted Veil'
• Selected critical essays and poems by Eliot