In the first half of the nineteenth century in England there was a strong interest in German literature and German scholarship. George Eliot studied German and German literature from the age of twenty. Her first publication, in 1846, was a translation of Friedrich Strauss's Das Leben Jesu; followed, in 1854, by the translation of Ludwig Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Christentums. That same year George Eliot left England with George Henry Lewes on her first visit to Germany. During the next three months they visited Frankfurt, Weimar and Berlin to collect material for Lewes's biography of Goethe. In this study, Gerlinde Röder-Bolton explores the impact of Goethe on George Eliot, whose elective affinity with Goethe was both ethical and artistic, and analyses George Eliot's responsiveness to Goethe's moral vision and the literary uses she makes of her familiarity with Goethe's work. George Eliot and Goethe: An Elective Affinity concentrates on The Mill on the Floss and Daniel Deronda, showing how the intertextual relationship with Die Wahlverwandtschaften holds the key to an understanding of the latter part of The Mill on the Floss, while the first part of Faust and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre throw new light on Daniel Deronda. This study, with its close analysis of a range of works by George Eliot and Goethe, is essential reading for anyone interested in both or either of these authors or in Anglo-German literary relations.

In the first half of the 19th century in England there was a strong interest in German literature and scholarship. This study explores the impact of the work of Goethe on George Eliot, whose "elective affinity" with Goethe was both ethical and artistic, and analyzes Eliot's responsiveness to Goethe's moral vision and the literary uses she makes of her familiarity with his work. Concentrates on The Mill on the Floss and Daniel Deronda, showing their relationship with Die Wahlverwandtschaften and Faust. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

From 1854 to 1855, George Eliot spent eight months in Germany, a period that marked the start of her life with George Lewes. Though Eliot documented this journey more extensively than any other, it has remained an under-researched part of Eliot's biography. In her meticulously documented and engaging book, Gerlinde Röder-Bolton draws on Eliot's own writings, as well as on extensive original research in German archives and libraries, to provide the most thorough account yet published of the couple's visit. Rich in historical, social, and cultural detail, George Eliot in Germany, 1854-55 not only records the couple's travels but supplies a context for their encounters with people and places. In the process, Röder-Bolton shows how the crossing of geographical boundaries may be read as symbolic of Eliot's transition from single woman to social outcast and from translator and critic to writer of fiction.

A unique study of how novels by Lawrence, Forster and George Eliot can be read as rewritings of Sophocles's Antigone : each is presented as a socially and sexually involving argument between two sisters. The author provides an interconnected case-study where each text works on the hidden meanings of the other. Female sexuality, expressed through the language of duality (vulnerability, frustration, submission and destructivity, consummation and rebirth), becomes an ideal vehicle for crossing the barriers between sexes and between societies, as between the texts themselves.

The works collected in this volume provide an illuminating introduction to George Eliot's incisive views on religion, art and science, and the nature and purpose of fiction. Essays such as 'Evangelical Teaching' show her rejecting her earlier religious beliefs, while 'Woman in France' questions conventional ideas about female virtues and marriage, and 'Notes on Form in Art' sets out theories of idealism and realism that she developed further in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. It also includes selections from Eliot's translations of works by Strauss and Feuerbach that challenged many ideas about Christianity; excerpts from her poems; and reviews of writers such as Wollstonecraft, Goethe and Browning. Wonderfully rich in imagery and observations, these pieces reveal the intellectual development of this most challenging and rewarding of writers.

Lewes--consort of George Eliot, biographer of Robespierre and Goethe, novelist, editor, and critic--was also a scientist and philosopher. Tjoa not only reconstructs Lewes' theory of criticism and his social and political opinions but also evaluates his contributions to Darwinian science both as original thinker and as popularizer.

Terence Cave traces the afterlives of Mignon, an apparently minor character in Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, through the European cultures of the 19th and 20th centuries. The enigmatic and fascinating Mignon reappears in wide range of different works, mainly narrative fiction but also poetry, song, opera, and film.

Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true ‘Renaissance Man’. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar’s court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics – and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.