George Eliot has proved her greatness by the successful analysis of both the words and the world. The very structure of language and the literary art answered best her sense of the world. Her linguistic structure seem to be accurate for the world she presents. The language is as crucial for Eliot as it is for any romantic poet. Specific kinds of words are used not only as evocative of a particular sensory world, but also as constitutive of the elements usually considered to predominate in mimetic prose fiction. In this book an attempt has been made to study the relation between character and setting, as expressed through gustatory and spatial language, to explore the organisational principles of George Eliot’s plot as they emerge from the language of sound and of sexuality. The language of the drama is examined along with the emotional effects of language with reference to humour and pathos. The repeated movements in each chapter from linguistic expression to fictional structure express the author’s way of generating characters, plot and point of view as adequate embodiments in the language of her stated meaning. Since no full-length study of George Eliot’s novels has so far been made from this standpoint, it is hoped that the present book will be of great interest for the academic community.
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