George Eliot's Romola, writes Robert Kiely in his Introduction, embodies the author's "wrestling with her own best theories of history and human nature as a creative experiment of the highest order." Set in Florence in 1492, a time of great political and religious turmoil, Eliot's novel blends vivid fictional characters with historical figures such as Savonarola, Machiavelli, and the Medicis. When Romola, the virtuous daughter of a blind scholar, marries Tito Melema, a charismatic young Greek, she is bound to a man whose escalating betrayals threaten to destroy all that she holds dear....
George Eliot's Romola, writes Robert Kiely in his Introduction, embodies the author's "wrestling with her own best theories of history and huma...
Reverse Tradition invites the reader of postmodern fiction to travel back to the nineteenth-century novel without pretending to let go of contemporary anxieties and expectations. What happens to the reader of Beckett when he or she returns to Melville? Or to the enthusiast of Toni Morrison who rereads Charlotte Bronte? While Robert Kiely does not claim that all fictions begin to look alike, he finds unexpected and illuminating pleasures in examining a variety of ways in which new texts reflect on old.
In this engaging book, Kiely not only juxtaposes familiar authors in...
Reverse Tradition invites the reader of postmodern fiction to travel back to the nineteenth-century novel without pretending to let go of co...
