Infection in the Sentence

Clairvoyance, Economics and Authorship in George Eliot's ‘The Lifted Veil’

“…Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that it was 'personal anxieties about authorship' 60 that led to 'recurrent interest in characters whose passivity, illness, and impotence are directly related to their visionary insight'. 61 Ruby Redinger believes '"The Lifted Veil" emerges as a symbolic expression of George Eliot's last serious battle with the dynamics of the creative process' 62 and Sally Shuttleworth agrees that it 'dramatiz[es] George Eliot's distrust of the creative authority she claimed in The Mill on the Floss'. 63 While each of these critics focus on Eliot's authorship as an important element in Latimer's creation they do not recognize that Latimer's ambiguous gender, loss of self-control and inability to indulge in meaningful labour reflect Eliot's anxieties about Liggins's claims on her fictions.…”

L’androgyne fécond ou les quatre conversions de l’écrivain

“…Parallèlement, au moins depuis le romantisme des années 1830, la sociabilité littéraire s'affirme, dans ses cercles les plus novateurs, comme une affaire d'hommes, et le choix de l'état d'artiste se double, de plus en plus ouvertement au fil du siècle, d'un antiféminisme déclaré et, parfois, théorisé. Le mépris pour la femme-auteur en est un indice des mieux étudiés aujourd'hui 46 . Transposant et amplifiant à l'échelle du groupe de jeunes créateurs la hiérarchie qui est la règle à l'intérieur du couple bourgeois, la sphère artistique et intellectuelle articulerait dialectiquement, en termes de valeurs si ce n'est en pratique, homosexualité virile et misogynie.…”

FromPashato Cleopatra and Vashti: The Oriental Other in Charlotte Brontë'sVillette

“…17 These critics note that Lucy herself supports Vashti's rebellion by interrupting her rhapsodic description of the artists with references to Cleopatra to indicate that Vashti puts to shame the former. 18 As Lucy comments, 'Place now the Cleopatra, or any other slug, before her as an obstacle, and see her cut through the pulpy mass as the scimitar of Saladin clove down the cushion' (V, p. 340). Because Cleopatra is silenced by her painter, the narrator resorts to a representation of Vashti to confront head-on the closed form of male culture in which female artistes are objectified as existing to serve male fantasies.…”