• Large-Scale Sympathy and Simultaneity in George Eliot’s Romola

    Author(s):
    Jacob Jewusiak (see profile)
    Date:
    2014
    Group(s):
    LLC Victorian and Early-20th-Century English
    Subject(s):
    Eliot, George, 1819-1880, Affect (Psychology)
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Narrative and time, George Eliot, Affect
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6RN3070S
    Abstract:
    This article argues that George Eliot’s Romola (1862-63) theorizes large-scale sympathy as a way of ethically engaging large groups of individuals outside one’s immediate social ambit. Yet the failed attempts of characters like Savonarola and Tito to imagine the experiences of unknown others suggests that large-scale sympathy estranges the sympathizing subject from the specificity of individual experience. This leads us to see a fault line at the heart of George Eliot’s work, whereby the necessity of imagining the simultaneous experience of others is continually brought into conflict with the impossibility—and the danger—of doing so.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.1353/sel.2014.0044
    Publisher:
    Johns Hopkins University Press
    Pub. Date:
    2014-12-7
    Journal:
    SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
    Volume:
    54
    Issue:
    4
    Page Range:
    853 - 874
    ISSN:
    1522-9270
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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