From Author to Text

This study shifts the critical emphasis from canonical author to her uncanonical text - from George Eliot to Romola - and so broadens the range of interpretive possibilities while bringing them into sharper focus. Eliot scholars have largely neglected the historical complexity of Romola , though it is a novel rich in political and textual issues. Among the issues explored here are the domestic politics of marriage, the relationship between narrative and epistemology, the materiality of the text, the novels relation to narratives of martyrdom, and the gendering of space.