FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE: “CONFESSION” VS “SERMON” IN GEORGE ELIOT’S THE LIFTED VEIL

• Main Author: Наталья Владимировна Горбунова (Natalya V. Gorbunova)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Perm State University 2018-04-01
• Series: Vestnik Permskogo universiteta: Rossijskaâ i zarubežnaâ filologiâ
• Subjects: викторианство; готический рассказ; Джордж Элиот; О. Конт; позитивизм; психологизм; исповедь; Ж.-Ж. Руссо; Аврелий Августин; Б. Шоу.
• Online Access: http://press.psu.ru/index.php/philology/article/view/1374

The article presents an interpretation of the little-known “gothic” story by George Eliot The Lifted Veil (1859). Created by the writer at the beginning of her career, and up to the present time insufficiently studied by Russian literary criticism, the story is regarded as a kind of experiment in integration of elements of religious and scientific discourse – which promotes the transformation of the relationship between the author and the reader and changes the nature of the narrative strategy of realistic text in the second half of the 19th century. The paper focuses on the following problems: The Lifted Veil and the classics of gothic prose (H. Walpole, M. Shelley); “duality” of European outlook in the middle of the 19th century (Au. Сomte) and comprehension of this phenomenon by positivist philosophy; peculiarities of perception of Nature and Memory in European confessional prose (Confession by St. Augustine, Confessions by J.-J. Rousseau); assessment of the writer’s creative work by her contemporaries (B. Shaw). The central question is the relationship between the potential of Religion and Science in early prose of George Eliot, who in this case affirms the idea of doubt and search in the realm of thought. The presented interpretation of the story The Lifted Veil in the context of European culture in the second half of the 19th century allows us to assert: the short prose by George Eliot contains opportunities for significant expansion of the narrative potential in connection with the strengthening of the psychological aspect in the Victorian literature, which in many respects anticipates the scientific research and discoveries of the subsequent period.