Kingsley Ervin
Tuesday 9:30-11:30 AM
January 10 through February 28, 2006
D.O.C. House
Daniel Deronda, George Eliot's wonderful final novel, is a complex interweaving of two detailed narratives. Critics found it less pleasing than earlier works like Middlemarch because its plot does not close with a conclusive act, and because Eliot often comments on moral and social issues of the 1870's. Its detailed study of historical Judaism, and the lives of its Jewish heroine and her family, may also have aroused unexpressed hostility.
The subject of the novel is moral awareness and growth, primarily in the lives of Gwendolyn Harleth and Daniel Deronda, but also of several other characters associated with their increasingly separate worlds. One critic wrote that "Eliot has real faith in a power which anticipates the end from the beginning, and moulds our nature so as to fit it for a life above nature." The events of the story shape this "moulding," in often brilliant writing that demands concentrated attention.
The novel is long: seven hundred pages in eight books. Classes will include brief lectures by the teacher, discussions of study questions and major issues, and optional reports by members of the class. Members should plan to have finished Book I before the opening session.
KINGSLEY ERVIN studied history and literature at Harvard, and after military service did graduate work in comparative literature at Columbia and the University of Paris, and in psycholinguistics at the University of Essex (England). He has taught at schools in New York City and Athens (Greece), and spent seventeen years as a headmaster before moving to Hanover in 1996. He has twice taught Middlemarch at ILEAD.
