Discuss dialogic imagination – representation of nature
In the tradition of Romanticism, Victorian novels continue to highlight nature and its importance in human life. In The Dialogic Imagination, Mikhail Bakhtin notes that the change from the focus of stories on communal life to a focus on individual and private matters brought about a change in the representation of nature:
Then nature became, by and large, a œsetting for action, its backdrop; it was turned into landscape, it was fragmented into metaphors and comparisons serving to sublimate individual and private affairs and adventures not connected in any intrinsic way with nature itself (217).
The Mill on the Floss starts with a description of nature and continues to refer to both landscapes and nature throughout. To what extent does the landscape, the nature as it is represented in the novel, relate to the characters and their issues? What kind of metaphors and comparisons does Eliot use to make landscape relevant to the characters?
In a four page (1,000 word) paper, explore the significance of nature in The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.
The paper should contain a discussion of œnature as seen by the Romantic poets we have read, the analysis of at least two extended examples where nature is described in the novel, and a conclusion that establishes the value of nature metaphors in portraying one or more characters.
