The Aesthetic Education of Humanity: George Eliot's "Romola" and Schiller's Theory of Tragedy

Abstract

Opinions concerning artistic success of George Eliot's Italian novel, Romola, have differed considerably since first appeared in serial form in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 to August 1863. Immediately following publication, found numerous enthusiastic admirers. Anthony Trollope, for one, thought the character of artistically beautiful. The critic for Westminster Review proclaimed novel its author's greatest work. And R. H. Hutton, a devoted and able defender of George Eliot's art, went so far as to assert that was one of greatest works of modern fiction.' Yet very soon afterward, this virtually universal approbation began to give way to opposite doubts about novel's genuine aesthetic merits. The setting of novel in last decade of fifteenth-century Florence required what came to be felt as excessive, and therefore distracting, exposition of historical background. As a result of Eliot's scrupulous efforts to evoke atmosphere of Renaissance, action seemed to be encumbered and slowed by unnecessary, even artificial, detail. But most serious of work's flaws seemed to be that heroine, after whom novel was named, was altogether too good, too noble-in short, she was too ideal. The character of was perceived, that is, as having been conceived at too great a distance from life and real experience, thereby offending foremost prescription of literary realism. In 1885, Henry James cast a backward glance over whole of George Eliot's fictional corpus, and he came to a typically equivocal conclusion about novel written during middle years of her career. Romola is on whole finest thing she wrote, James somewhat dutifully allowed, but defects are almost on scale of beauties. His principal objection was that, in spite of several undeniable virtues, it does not seem positively to live.2 In fastening solely upon negative portion of James's dictum, later critics have not attempted, however, to maintain his careful equilibrium of praise