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- Title
Building the Brain: The Architectural Interior in George Eliot's Middlemarch.
- Authors
Ryder, Molly
- Abstract
While George Eliot's use of organic structures (such as water, webs, and currents) as a vehicle for the representation of contemporary psychological theories and mental processes has been extensively explored, far less critical attention has been paid to the structural counterpart to these organic images: the labyrinth, staircase, and anteroom. Focusing on Middlemarch (1872), this article explores the slippage between the well-documented organic mode of representation and that of the architectural and built metaphors through which Eliot pushes at the boundaries of the realist aesthetic, as well as the moments in which she displays a conversion technique by describing something organic in architectural terms. Eliot demonstrates these conversions particularly during the portion of the novel set in Rome, a city that unites the architectural and the archaeological, allowing the novel's heroine to construct and renovate her vision of her husband's mind via these schemes. Through such analysis, this article argues that Eliot's formal mode creates a bridge between material and psychological realism.
- Subjects
MIDDLEMARCH (Book : Eliot); ELIOT, George, 1819-1880; REALISM
- Publication
Victoriographies, 2017, Vol 7, Issue 3, p224
- ISSN
2044-2416
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3366/vic.2017.0281