Abstract
This article examines how George Eliot negotiated the nineteenth-century debate regarding connections and divergences between literature and the visual arts. It traces her knowledge of narrative art in her early career and indicates how her travel journals provided a site to develop a narrative way of seeing. Her early fiction, especially the story “Janet's Repentance” in Scenes of Clerical Life, shows how Eliot integrated this way of seeing into her fiction by creating narrative-oriented character portraits, a technique she perfected in her most famous novel, Middlemarch. Still, after the publication of Middlemarch, Eliot found ways to expand this technique in her last novel, Daniel Deronda, by drawing on Pre-Raphaelite paintings to provide more socially oriented narrative portraits. By expanding this technique to include socially oriented portraits, Eliot made a significant contribution to the debate over the relationship between literature and the visual arts, showing that the two mediums could be fused.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
