Realism, Morality and Narrative Strategies in George Eliot’s Middlemarch

• Main Authors: Grace Yang, 楊珮菁
• Other Authors: Kuo-jung Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2000
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/56515025754202866005

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國語文研究所 === 88 === Artistic truthfulness, moral sentiment and the ability to arouse the reader’s sympathy are three essential prerequisites to George Eliot’s novel writing. These three essences have a close interrelation and reinforce one another successfully in Eliot’s Middlemarch. The purpose of this thesis is to discuss how these three essences are represented in Middlemarch through Eliot’s control of narrative strategies. The first chapter focuses on Eliot’s concept of realism, the effects of using authentic background, the use of antithetic art, and the quandary of realism. Through different techniques, Eliot represents a realistic picture of human experience and bridges the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. Chapter Two discusses Eliot’s ultimate subject, the development of human morality and its relation to the representation of reality in Middlemarch. Though Eliot’s artistic purpose is always didactic, she is able to be a creative novelist and a serious moralist at the same time because of her aesthetic teaching. Chapter Three discusses the narrative strategies Eliot employs in Middlemarch: parallel, contrast, and the shift of perspectives. The narrative strategies are helpful to reader’s understanding of the novel and reinforce the moral effects in the novel. Finally, in Chapter Four, I deal with the roles of the narrator and the reader and the problem of interpretation. The reader of Middlemarch is often required to adopt a proper perspective and form his/her own judgment in the process of reading.