Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T10:49:37.735Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Middlemarch: The Language of Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Joseph Wiesenfarth
Joseph Wiesenfarth*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The aesthetic theory pervading Middlemarch provides a context for interpreting the novel and understanding its references to the arts; consequently a language of art is important to the novel's (1) imagery, (2) aesthetic theory, and (3) iconography. (1) Although Dorothea Brooke is characterized in images of music and poetry, her Puritanic sensibility has hampered her aesthetic development, and the classical and Catholic artifacts of Rome oppress her senses as marriage to Casaubon oppresses her spirit. (2) To help her, Will Ladislaw teaches Dorothea the language of art, with the aid of Ruskin, Lessing, and Goethe—all champions of realism. (3) Eliot further dramatizes the relations of Casaubon, Dorothea, and Ladislaw by invoking the myth of Theseus, Ariadne, and Dionysus —a myth surrounded and amplified by allusions to literature and art. Guiding Eliot's use of the language of art in Middlemarch is Ruskin's aesthetic of Naturalist Idealism.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 97 , Issue 3 , May 1982 , pp. 363 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Arnold, Matthew. “Culture and Anarchy.” In The Portable Matthew Arnold. Ed. Trilling, Lionel. New York: Viking 1956.Google Scholar
Deneau, Daniel. “Eliot's Casaubon and Mythology.” American Notes and Queries 6(1968): 125–27.Google Scholar
Duerksen, Ronald A. “Shelley in Middlemarch.” Keats-Shelley Journal 14(1965):23–31.Google Scholar
Duncan-Jones, E. E. “Hazlitt's Mistake.” Times Literary Supplement, 27 Jan. 1966, 68.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. “Art and Belles Lettres.” Westminster Review, U.S.A. ed., April 1856; partly rpt. Eliot, A Writer's Notebook.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. Essays of George Eliot. Ed. Pinney, Thomas. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Ed. Haight, Gordon S. 9 vols. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1954-55, 1978.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Ed. Haight, Gordon S. Boston: Houghton, 1956.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. Rev. of Lectures on Architecture and Painting, by John Ruskin. Leader, 10 June 1854; partly rpt. Eliot, A Writer's Notebook.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. Rev. of Modern Painters, Vol. 3, by John Ruskin. Westminster Review, U.S.A. ed., April 1856; partly rpt. Eliot, A Writer's Notebook.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. A Writer's Notebook, 1854-1879, and Uncollected Writings. Ed. Wiesenfarth, Joseph. Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1981.Google Scholar
Feltes, N. N. “George Eliot's ‘Pier Glass’: The Development of a Metaphor.” Modern Philology 67(1969–70):69–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haight, Gordon S. “George Eliot's ‘Eminent Failure,‘ Will Ladislaw.” In This Particular Web: Essays on Middlemarch. Ed. Adam, Ian. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1975, 22–42.Google Scholar
Haight, Gordon S. “George Eliot's Originals.” In From Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad. Ed. Rathburn, Robert C. and Steinmann, Martin Jr. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1958, 177–93.Google Scholar
Harvey, W. J. “The Intellectual Background of the Novel: Casaubon and Lydgate.” In Middlemarch: Critical Approaches to the Novel. Ed. Hardy, Barbara. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, 25–37.Google Scholar
Hungerford, Edward B. Shores of Darkness. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1941.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jameson, Anna Brownell. Legends of the Madonna, as Represented in the Fine Arts. 1852; rpt. London: Hutchinson, n.d.Google Scholar
Jameson, Anna Brownell. Sacred and Legendary Art. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1848.Google Scholar
Kettle, Arnold. An Introduction to the English Novel. 2 vols. New York: Harper; London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1951.Google Scholar
King, C. W. Antique Gems: Their Origin, Uses, and Value as Interpreters of Ancient History; and as Illustrative of Ancient Art. London: John Murray, 1860.Google Scholar
Knoepflmacher, U. C. “Fusing Fact and Myth: The New Reality of Middlemarch.” In This Particular Web: Essays on Middlemarch. Ed. Adam, Ian. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1975, 55–65.Google Scholar
Lewes, George Henry. The Life and Works of Goethe (1855). 2 vols. Rpt. as vols. 13 and 14 of The Works of J. W. von Goethe. Ed. Nathan Haskell Dole. 14 vols. London: Francis A. Nicolls, n.d.Google Scholar
Lewes, George Henry. Rev. of “Letters on Christian Art,” by Friedrich von Schlegel. Athenaeum, No. 1117 (1849): 296.Google Scholar
Mansell, Darrell Jr. “Ruskin and George Eliot's Realism.” Criticism 7(1965): 203–16.Google Scholar
Pfeiffer, Sibilla. George Eliots Beziehungen zu Deutschland. Anglistische Forschungen. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925.Google Scholar
Pratt, John Clark, and Neufeldt, Victor A., eds. George Eliot's Middlemarch Notebooks: A Transcription. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, John D. The Darkening Glass: A Portrait of Ruskin's Genius. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruskin, John. The Works of Ruskin. Ed. Cook, E. T. and Wedderburn, Alexander. 39 vols. London: George Allen; New York: Longmans, Green, 1903.Google Scholar
Stahr, Adolf. Torso: Kunst, Kiinstler und Kunstwerk der Alten. 2 vols. Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1854–55.Google Scholar
Wiesenfarth, Joseph. “Commentary.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 30(1976): 572–73.Google Scholar
Wiesenfarth, Joseph. George Eliot's Mythmaking. Reihe Siegen I. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1977.Google Scholar
Witemeyer, Hugh. George Eliot and the Visual Arts. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979.Google Scholar