| dc.contributor.author | van den Broek, A. G. | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-10-21T12:35:27Z | |
| dc.date.available | 1990 | |
| dc.date.issued | 1990 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.other | AAINN64606 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10222/55239 | |
| dc.description | Although George Eliot's novels have been compared with Shakespeare's plays and poems on an ad hoc basis, no systematic analysis has been made of the many connections that do in fact exist between their texts. This thesis tries to fill that gap by analyzing the numerous Shakespearean allusions, references, mottoes, and extracts found in Eliot's novels, letters, notebooks, journals, and marginalia. By bringing this information together for the first time (which, it is hoped, may prove useful to further studies), an attempt is made to assess how Eliot assimilated Shakespeare's texts into her own. | en_US |
| dc.description | Chapter 1, the Introduction, surveys Eliot's close reading of Shakespeare's plays and poems and comments on some of the moral issues and aesthetic principles which she admired in his work and seems to have adopted or elaborated on in her own fiction. Subsequent chapters are devoted to each of her novels. They examine the subtle ways in which she uses Shakespeare's texts in the portrayal of her characters and the development of her plots and themes. The Shakespearean allusions in Scenes of Clerical Life, which are used to encourage the reader to view Eliot's ordinary, non-heroic characters with sympathy and understanding, are discussed in chapter 2. The thematic parallels between Adam Bede and As You Like It are explored in chapter 3, while aspects of Hamlet's tragedy are compared with Maggie Tulliver's story in chapter 4. Chapter 5 argues that Romola and Silas Marner may be seen as experiments in realism and romance--prompted by Eliot's reading of Shakespeare--while chapter 6 argues that Felix Holt has a dramatic structure suggestive of Shakespeare's plays. The discussion of Middlemarch, in chapter 7, centres on Eliot's many borrowings from Shakespeare's texts and identifies the various similarities of character, plot, and theme that are woven into her text; and Daniel Deronda's theme of "hearing with eyes," a metaphor used by Shakespeare to refer to the power of the imagination, is analyzed in chapter 8. Chapter 9, the conclusion, comments briefly on why Eliot spent so much time and effort studying Shakespeare. | en_US |
| dc.description | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1990. | en_US |
| dc.language | eng | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Dalhousie University | en_US |
| dc.publisher | | en_US |
| dc.subject | Theater. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Literature, English. | en_US |
| dc.title | Reading George Eliot reading Shakespeare. | en_US |
| dc.type | text | en_US |
| dc.contributor.degree | Ph.D. | en_US |
