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.

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ANDREW THOMPSON

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'[A] distinctive contribution to the burgeoning literature on nineteenth-century British enthusiasm for all things Italian...sure to be eagerly devoured accordingly.' - Literature & History

Book Information
ISBN 9780312176518
Author A. Thompson
Format Hardback
Page Count 243
Imprint Palgrave Macmillan
Publisher Palgrave USA