GEORGE ELIOT AND ITALY

GEORGE ELIOT AND ITALY

George Eliot and Italy Literary, Cultural and Political Influences from Dante to the Risorgimento Andrew Thompson University of Genoa, Italy

First published in Great Britain 1998 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-40175-8 ISBN 978-0-230-39018-8 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230390188 First published in the United States of America 1998 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-17651-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thompson, Andrew, 1962- George Eliot and Italy: literary, cultural, and political influences from Dante to the Risorgimento I Andrew 1l10mpson. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-17651-8 (cloth) I. Eliot, George, 1819-1880-Knowledge-ltaly. 2. Eliot, George, 1819-1880-Political and social views. 3. Political fiction, English-History and criticism. 4. Eliot, George, 1819-1880. Daniel Deronda. 5. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321-lnflucnce. 6. English fiction-italian influences. 7. Eliot, George, 1819-1880. Romola. 8. Italy--In literature. PR4692.182T47 1997 823'.8-dc21 97-16082 CIP Andrew Thompson 1998 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 978-0-333-69456-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE. Any person who docs any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 07 06 OS 04 03 02 01 3 2 I 00 99 98

This book, che m'ha fatto per piii anni macro, is for my parents

Contents List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements viii ix Introduction 1 1 Dante, the Risorgimento and the British: the Italian Background 6 2 George Eliot's Contact with Italian Life and Culture 1840-61 30 3 Eliot's Italian Exile in 'Mr Gilfil's Love Story' (Scenes of Clerical Life) 50 4 Italian Mythmaking in Romola 68 5 Dante in Romola 84 6 Dante and Moral Choice in Felix Holt, the Radical 98 7 Italian Culture and Influences in Middlemarch 120 8 Gwendolen's 'Other Road': Dante in Daniel Deronda 145 9 Italian Poetry and Music in Daniel Deronda 161 10 Daniel Veranda, Italian Prophecy, Dante and George Eliot 173 Notes 196 Bibliography 227 Index 235 vii

List of Abbreviations Biography Cross Extracts GE GE Diary GE Journal GHL GHL Journal Letters Haight, G.S., George Eliot: a Biography, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1985 (1968) George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Arranged and Edited by Her Husband, J.W. Cross, (3 vols), Edinburgh and London: Blackwood & Sons 1885 'Interesting Extracts' manuscript 14, The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington 3, DC George Eliot MS diary for 1879 (Berg Collection, New York Public Library) MS diary for 1880 (Yale) MS Journal, 'Recollections of Italy' 1860 (Yale MS2) George Henry Lewes MS journal, number XI, Aprillst, 1859-January 1st, 1866 (Yale) The George Eliot Letters, G.S. Haight (ed.), 9 vols, New Haven and London 1954-78 Notebook 1854-79 George Eliot: A Writer's Notebook 1854-1879, and Uncollected Writings edited by J. Wiesenfarth (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia, 1981) Theophrastus WR Theophrastus Such; Essays and Leaves from a Notebook Blackwood, Edinburgh and London 1901 The Westminster Review viii

Acknowledgements The best guide to the many debts I owe in the writing of this book will be found in the Bibliography, though there were many other influences, of some of which I am probably not even aware. I would, however, like to single out a number of works as being of particular importance and without which the task facing me would have been far more daunting. I am particularly indebted to Romana Cortese's unpublished Ph.D. thesis George Eliot and Dante and to the invaluable painstaking work of Joseph Wiesenfarth, William Baker, J.C. Pratt and V.A. Neufeld in producing annotated editions of George Eliot's notebooks. I hope my debt to these scholars has been sufficiently acknowledged. I would like to thank my father, Professor Doug Thompson of the Italian Department of the University of Hull UK, for his comments and suggestions concerning Dante and the nineteenth-century Italian context and for the many discussions which helped stimulate and focus some of the ideas in the book, as well as for much help and advice of a practical nature. I am grateful to both my parents for being patient, supportive and critical readers of the various drafts of the manuscript. I would also like to thank Dr Graham Handley for his valuable comments on the later drafts of some chapters and Professor Giuseppe Sertoli of the University of Genoa for his interest and encouragement throughout the project. Thanks, too, to Charmian Hearne, Sheila Chatten and the staff at Macmillan for seeing the work smoothly through the press. Special thanks are due to Patrizia Vadala and to Nadia Santini. Any faults and shortcomings in the book are of course entirely my own. ANDREW THOMPSON ix

... the pathos of his country's lot pierced the youthful soul of Mazzini, because, like Dante's, his blood was fraught with the kinship of Italian greatness, his imagination filled with a majestic past that wrought itself into a majestic future. (George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such) Italy was little more to her than a vast museum,... (Lord Acton, Nineteenth Century Fiction 17 (1885}) X