Teaching of George Eliot
George Eliot thought of herself as a teacher, as did her contemporaries. Their view that her writing was not simply influenced in a relatively haphazard way by her philosophical and scientific reading but was a deliberate and consistent attempt to synthesize in fiction an elaborate and coherent theoretical analysis of the human situation is studied in this book, originally published in 1984. Eliot’s Associationist philosophy, her Feuerbachian readings of religion, her ethic of Submission and her sense that Positivism can be transcended in art and vision are here subjected to a thorough Marxist, Nietzschean and psycho-analytical critique.
William Myers retired as Professor of English Literature in 2004, having taught for most of his life in the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester, as well as lecturing in half a dozen universities in the United States, His interests and published works extend from Milton to Waugh and reflect his interest in theology, philosophy and science as well as in literature. He was involved in Adult Education throughout his career, and deplores its current decline in the UK. After his retirement he was ordained as a Permanent Deacon in the Catholic Diocese of Nottingham, but is no longer in active ministry.