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Palgrave Macmillan

George Eliot and Victorian Historiography

Imagining the National Past

  • Book
  • © 2000

Overview

Authors:
  1. Neil McCaw

    1. King Alfred’s College, Winchester, UK

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
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  2. Introduction: ‘Those Far-Reaching Visions of the Past’

    • Neil McCaw
    Pages 1-15

  3. George Eliot and the (Meta)Narrativity of History

    • Neil McCaw
    Pages 16-32

  4. Imagining the National Past

    • Neil McCaw
    Pages 33-50

  5. A Natural History of English Life

    • Neil McCaw
    Pages 51-65

  6. A Carlylean Counter-Paradigm

    • Neil McCaw
    Pages 66-84

  7. Theodicy and History

    • Neil McCaw
    Pages 85-99

  8. Imagining the National Present

    • Neil McCaw
    Pages 100-120

  9. Unwritten Landscapes: Imagining the National Future

    • Neil McCaw
    Pages 121-138

  10. Conclusion: Beyond Victorian Historiography

    • Neil McCaw
    Pages 139-146

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 147-203
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Keywords

About this book

In this new study of George Eliot's fiction, textual attempts to imagine a coherent and unified national past are seen as producing a contradictory vision of Englishness. It is a historiographical national identity, constructed in the image of predominant, and conflicting, trends in the Victorian writing of history. The inherent uncertainty caused by the shift between different perceptions of English history leads, in the later fiction, to an abandonment of contemporaneous grand narratives. The consequence is a history that anticipates a more modern, radical philosophy of history.

Authors and Affiliations

  • King Alfred’s College, Winchester, UK

    Neil McCaw

About the author

Neil McCaw is Lecturer in English Studies, School of Cultural Studies, King Alfred's College.

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