George Eliot, Judaism, and the novels

the long version

"This is the first study to argue that George Eliot's interest in Judaism, particularly Jewish myth and mysticism, influenced all of her fiction, not merely her 'Jewish novel', Daniel Deronda. It leaves the reader with a very different George Eliot from that assumed by most previous criticism. Though previous studies have attempted to qualify the still-dominant view that Eliot is firmly part of the realist tradition, this study goes further by demonstrating that a cohesive mystic structure with its basis in Jewish mysticism is identifiable in her fiction. That Eliot could exploit Jewish mystical ideas in her work without having any literal belief in them, links her with modernist writers like Joyce and Yeats who also use myth and esoteric ideas to build into their writing layers of meaning and implication. Providing helpful background information about the golem myth and various aspects of Kabbalism, this work will appeal to anyone interested in the golem as both myth and metaphor, the influence of Jewish thought on Victorian culture, and George Eliot studies in general."--BOOK JACKET.