George Eliot and the Novel of Vocation

Alan Mintz

Published by Harvard University Press 1978

George Eliot and the Novel of Vocation

Alan Mintz

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674428560

Overview
Contents

About this book

Mintz has discovered a new sub-genre of fiction: the novel of vocation. In the nineteenth century, he maintains, work ceased to be merely what one did for a living or out of a sense of duty and became a vehicle for self-definition and self-realization. The change was prepared for by the growth of professions and the increase in middle-class career opportunities, He shows how George Eliot, in particular, linked these new social possibilities to the older Puritan doctrine of calling or vocation, achieving in her late novels a fictional structure that could encompass the conflicting energies of the age. In the idea of vocation she found a way to explore how far it is possible to be ambitious both for oneself and for a large cause, and a way to probe the contradictions between ambitious, self-defining work and the older institutions; of family, community, and religion.

The book is solidly grounded in cultural and historical reality. Although Mintz concentrate on George Eliot and especially Middlemarch, he also examines the conceptions of self and work in Victorian biographies and autobiographies and the emergence in late-nineteenth-century fiction of the idea of the vocation of art.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
PREFACE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
1. IDEAS AND INSTITUTIONS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. THE SHAPE OF A LIFE IN BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
3. MIDDLEMARCH: THE ROMANCE OF VOCATION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
4. MIDDLEMARCH: ORIGINS AND TAXONOMY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
5. MIDDLEMARCH: INDIRECTION AND IDENTIFICATION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
6. MIDDLEMARCH: CHOICE AND EVASION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
7. DANIEL DERONDA AND THE MESSIANIC CALLING Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
8. EPILOGUE: THE CRAFT OF SOCIETY AND THE VOCATION OF ART Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Copyright year: 1978
Edition: Reprint 2014
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Front matter: 11
- Main content: 193
Keywords: LITERARY CRITICISM / Women Authors; LITERARY CRITICISM / General; Vocation in literature.; Eliot, George, 1819-1880 Middlemarch.

eBook

Published: October 1, 2013
ISBN: 9780674428560

Hardcover

Published: February 5, 1978
ISBN: 9780674428553