Technique and idea in George Eliot's Felix Holt

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1956

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George Eliot believed that aesthetic teaching was the highest of all teaching because it dealt with life in its highest complexity. Art was most efficacious in inducing belief because it made its appeal to the emotions. Her problem as a novelist and as a teacher was to give artistic form to her ideas so that the presentation would lay hold on the emotions as human experience and flash conviction. This thesis is an examination of methods which George Eliot used in creating the work of art which would arouse sympathy and urge belief in her ideas. Four general ideas or categories of ideas are linked with four literary techniques: the idea of the individual and society with the technique of weaving a web; the idea of progress with the technique of exposition and plot; the idea of character with the technique of balance and contrast; and the idea of nature with the technique of description. It is believed that an analysis of method is an aid in understanding meaning. It is further suggested that through the use of technique and idea to create the work of art, a more profound meaning .emerges at the level of aesthetic experience. George Eliot's ultimate wisdom is made explicit at this level-what she called the "human sanctities"-and the lesson to be learned from this aesthetic experience is this ultimate wisdom. Felix Holt has been chosen for analysis. Though it is probably the least read of her novels, it is representative of her work, which, as she herself maintained, was singularly all of a whole.

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