Hurst, Isobel. 2025. The Classics. In: Juliette Atkinson and Elisha Cohn, eds. The Oxford Handbook of George Eliot. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192856593 [Book Section] (Forthcoming)

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Abstract or Description

This chapter examines the work which laid the foundation for Eliot’s recognition as a classicist, her responses to Greek and Latin literature in her journalism and early fiction and her depiction of classical education. It surveys the ways in which Eliot gained access to classical learning, responses to her novels by classical scholars, and her representations of classical education in her fiction, particularly in The Mill on the Floss. It explores how Eliot drew on Greek comedy and tragedy in realist fiction. Her allusions to Aeschylus and Sophocles in Scenes from Clerical Life, Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss prepared readers to understand Eliot’s claim that the lives of obscure people in the nineteenth century were significant and worthy of literary representation.

Item Type:	Book Section
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	English and Comparative Literature
Dates:	Date Event 9 September 2024 Accepted 13 May 2025 Published
Item ID:	37753
Date Deposited:	21 Oct 2024 08:27
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2024 11:17
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/37753

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