Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:04:57.066Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Apocalypse of the Old Testament: Daniel Deronda and the Interpretation of Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Mary Wilson Carpenter
Mary Wilson Carpenter*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although critics have questioned the unity of Daniel Deronda, the double narrative structure of the novel has not been related to contemporary (Victorian) fictions of history. George Eliot's “Oriental Memoranda” notebook documents her interest in current histories of the Jews and suggests a context of universal history based on critical interpretations of the Book of Daniel. This exegetical “key” to interpretation reveals both the significance of Eliot's separation of the plot into two strands and the apocalyptic symbolism that links those strands together in a universal history of humanity in exile. Finally, this “key” suggests that circumcision, though never mentioned in the text, is nevertheless central to the vision uniting Jews with Christians. Daniel Deronda is George Eliot's “Book of Origins,” in which she seeks to deconstruct conventions of history that separate past from present and Jew from Gentile and to reenvision how “everything [is] … related to everything else.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 99 , Issue 1 , January 1984 , pp. 56 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Alley, Henry. “New Year's at the Abbey: Point of View in the Pivotal Chapters of Daniel Deronda.” Journal of Narrative Technique 9 (1979): 147–59.Google Scholar
Baker, William. George Eliot and Judaism. No. 45 in Romantic Reassessment series. Ed. Hogg, James. Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1975.Google Scholar
Baker, William. Some George Eliot Notebooks: An Edition of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library's George Eliot Holograph Notebooks. MS. 707. Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1976, vol. 1.Google Scholar
Beaty, Jerome. “Daniel Deronda and the Question of Unity in Fiction.” Victorian Newsletter 15 (1959): 16–19.Google Scholar
Beebe, Maurice. “‘Visions Are Creators’: The Unity of Daniel Deronda.” Boston University Studies in English 1 (1955): 166–77.Google Scholar
Bickersteth, Edward. Practical Guide to the Prophecies. 6th London ed. Philadelphia, 1841.Google Scholar
Birks, T. R. The Four Prophetic Empires and the Kingdom of Messiah: Being an Exposition of the First Two Visions of Daniel. Christian's Family Library. Ed. Bickersteth, Edward. 2nd ed. London, 1845.Google Scholar
Bonaparte, Felicia. The Triptych and the Cross: The Central Myths of George Eliot's Imagination. New York: New York Univ. Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Call, W. M. W. “The Apocalypse.” Westminster Review, Oct. 1861, 448–87.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Mary Wilson, and Landow, George P. “Ambiguous Revelations: The Apocalypse and Victorian Literature.” In The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature. Ed. Patrides, C. A. and Wittreich, Joseph A. Jr. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Chase, Cynthia. “The Decomposition of the Elephants: Double-Reading Daniel Deronda.” PMLA 93 (1978): 215–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cumming, John. Lectures on the Apocalypse. 1st ser. Philadelphia, 1855.Google Scholar
Cumming, John. Lectures on the Book of Daniel. Philadelphia, 1854.Google Scholar
Davison, John. Discourses on Prophecy … Its Structure, Use, and Inspiration…. 5th ed. London, 1845.Google Scholar
Desprez, Philip S. Daniel; or, The Apocalypse of the Old Testament. Pref. Rowland Williams. London, 1865.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. Ed. Hardy, Barbara. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1967.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. “Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming.” Westminster Review, Oct. 1855. Rpt. in Essays of George Eliot. Ed. Pinney, Thomas. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1963, 158–89.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. 9 vols. Ed. Haight, Gordon S. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1954–78.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. “Oriental Memoranda” notebook. Carl H. Pforzheimer Library MS. 710.Google Scholar
Elliott, Edward Bishop. Horae Apocalypticae. 4 vols. 1844; rpt. London, 1862.Google Scholar
Ewald, Heinrich. History of Israel. Trans. from the German. Vols. 1, 2, ed. Martineau, Russell. London, 1876. Vols. 3, 4, 5, ed. Carpenter, J. E. London, 1871, 1874.Google Scholar
Faber, George Stanley. The Sacred Calendar of Prophecy. 3 vols. London, 1828.Google Scholar
Firth, Katharine R. The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine. “The Failure of Realism: Felix Holt.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 35 (1980): 373–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gezari, Janet. “Romola and the Myth of Apocalypse.” In George Eliot: Centenary Essays and an Unpublished Fragment. Ed. Smith, Anne. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1980, 77–102.Google Scholar
Haight, Gordon S. George Eliot: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Jay, Elisabeth. The Religion of the Heart. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979.Google Scholar
Keble, John. The Christian Year. Boston, 1867. Knoepflmacher, U. C. “Fusing Fact and Myth: The New Reality of Middlemarch.” In This Particular Web: Essays on Middlemarch. Ed. Ian Adam. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1975, 43–72.Google Scholar
Keble, John. George Eliot's Early Novels: The Limits of Realism. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Kriefall, Luther Harry. “A Victorian Apocalypse: A Study of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda and Its Relation to David F. Strauss' Das Leben Jesu.” Diss. Univ. of Michigan 1966.Google Scholar
Kuenen, Abraham. Prophets and Prophecy in Israel. Trans. Milroy, Adam. London, 1877.Google Scholar
Kuenen, Abraham. Religion of Israel. 3 vols. Trans. May, Alfred Heath. London, 1875.Google Scholar
Landow, George P. Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows: Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature, Art, and Thought. London: Routledge, 1981.Google Scholar
Leavis, F. R. The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad. New York: Stewart, 1949.Google Scholar
Levine, George. “George Eliot's Hypothesis of Reality.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 35 (1980): 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGowan, John P. “The Turn of George Eliot's Realism.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 35 (1980): 171–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mede, Joseph. The Apostasy of the Latter Times. London, 1642.Google Scholar
Miller, J. Hillis. “Narrative and History.” ELH 49 (1974): 455–73.Google Scholar
Miller, J. Hillis. “Optic and Semiotic in Middlemarch.” In The Worlds of Victorian Fiction. Ed. Buckley, Jerome. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1975, 125–45.Google Scholar
Milman, Henry Hart. History of the Jews. 2nd ed. New York, 1864.Google Scholar
Newton, Thomas. Dissertations on the Prophecies. London, 1832.Google Scholar
Pusey, E. B. Daniel the Prophet. 2nd ed. New York, 1885.Google Scholar
Sandeen, Ernest R. The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1932. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Schorer, Mark. “Fiction and the ‘Matrix of Analogy.‘” In Middlemarch. By George Eliot. Ed. Hornback, Bert G. New York: Norton, 1977, 706–14.Google Scholar
Shaffer, E. S. “Kubla Khan” and the Fall of Jerusalem: The Mythological School in Biblical Criticism and Secular Literature 1770–1880. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn. The Jewish Church. 3 vols. London, 1863.Google Scholar
Stuart, Moses. A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Boston, 1850.Google Scholar
Sudrann, Jean. “Daniel Deronda and the Landscape of Exile.” ELH 37 (1970): 433–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swann, Brian. “George Eliot's Ecumenical Jew; or, The Novel as Outdoor Temple.” Novel 8 (1974–75): 39–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilt, Judith. Ghosts of the Gothic: Austen, Eliot and Lawrence. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittreich, Joseph A. Jr. Visionary Poetics: Milton's Tradition and His Legacy. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1979.Google Scholar