This study considers George Eliot's novels in relation to Dante and to nineteenth-century Italian culture during the Italian national revival and shows how these helped shape her fiction. Thompson argues that Eliot was able to draw selectively on a powerful Risorgimento mythology of national regeneration and that her engagement with the work of Dante Alighieri increases steadily in her later novels, where the Divine Comedy becomes a sustaining metaphor for Eliot's meliorist vision and for her theme of moral growth through suffering.
| ISBN: | 9780312176518 |
| Publication date: | 11th February 1998 |
| Author: | Andrew Thompson |
| Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan an imprint of Palgrave Macmillan UK |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 243 pages |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: poetry and poets Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 Cultural studies Literature: history and criticism Fiction |