Title: Postcolonial George Eliot /
Authors: Lovesey, Oliver
Year: 2017
Subjects: Eliot, George, Criticism and interpretation.; Eliot, George,; Postcolonialism in literature.; Postcolonialism in literature.
Abstract: "This book examines the range of the colonial imaginary in Eliot's works, from the domestic and regional to ancient and speculative colonialisms. It challenges monolithic, hegemonic views of George Eliot -- whose novelistic career paralleled the creation of British India -- and also dismissals of the postcolonial as ahistorical. It uncovers often-overlooked colonized figures in the novels. It also investigates Victorian Islamophobia in light of Eliot's impatience with ignorance, intolerance, and xenophobia as well as her interrogation of the make-believe of endings. Drawing on a range of sources from Eugène Bodichon's Algerian anthropological texts, the Persian journals of John Martyn, and postmodern re-engagements, Postcolonial George Eliot has implications for an understanding of the globalization of English, the decolonization of disciplinarity and periodization, and the roots of present-day conflict in the wider Mediterranean world"--Back cover.
Contents: Introduction: George Eliot and the Victorian postcolonial -- Decolonizing Victorian anthropology (scenes of Clerical life and Adam Bede) -- George Eliot and Victorian Islamophobia (Felix Holt's colonial subject) -- Middlemarch's colonial imaginary -- Conclusion: the Leavis tradition, educational assessment, and the postcolonial library.