Historiographical Awareness And The Building Of A National Community In George Eliot's Novels

George Eliot regards novel-writing as a way of getting involved in social practice.Through her novels,she rewrites the history of English everyday life from the end of 18th century to the mid 19th century,making an integration of history,sociology and psychology in the novels,creating a unique historical-realistic literary writing style.The wide distribution and acceptance of her novels imparts Victorian readers the embedded historical and social ideas,promoting English national community building in the process of social transformation.This dissertation analyses how George Eliot helps build multi-level English national community by way of history-rewriting and what are the origins of her intellectual development and the power to push her literary creation,presenting more information to help recognize her contribution in Victorian literary circle.On one hand,through close reading of the texts of George Eliot's novels from the perspective of historiography,this study analyses the choice of characters,the narrative structure,point of view,and the feelings of the characters.The 19th century English literary tradition being taken into consideration,specific images of national identity and ordinary humanity are interpreted.On the other hand,the social and cultural context of Victorian Age is studied,including European intellectual history in the 19fth century concerned and the functions of literary imagination in national community building.Literature is the-product of certain social and historical development,which influences the representation of literary texts.This dissertation tries to make a difference in the following three aspects:first,the interdisciplinary study of relationship between historiographical awareness andnational community building in George Eliot's novels is carried out.George Eliot'snovels represent historical subject,historical meliorism and English,everyday history,shedding a historical insight into English national community building in the 19th century.And the complex relationship between individual and collective incommunity building process helps enrich English everyday history in turn.Second,all the novels and three nevelle written by George Eliot are taken into consideration in this study,together with useful information in her letters,journals,translated works and social context,to analyse George Eliot's historiographical awareness and her contribution to national community-building.Third,the documents,academic history and intellectual history revolving around George Eliot's novels offer a multi-dimensional scope for interpretation rather than to study the text within a narrowly-built theoretical paradigm.All these help carry out a new way of studying George Eliot's novels.