George Eliot's 'The Lifted Veil': A Sequential and Contextual Reading

The Lifted Veil by George Eliot is a compact macrotext that explores themes, motifs, patterns, and cultural and personal archetypes, and is the linchpin of Eliot's oeuvre. It is contextualized by placing it within Eliot's oeuvre and against the background of Victorian mid-century fiction, and intersecting various contemporary genres and subgenres. However, critical literature has tended to overlook the encrypting of the experience of a failed religious conversion and the foreshadowing of the search for a spiritual and racial identity of Daniel Deronda, the hero of Eliot's final novel.

Format: Hardback
Length: 238 pages
Publication date: 31 January 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Rewritten text:

"The Lifted Veil, a novel by George Eliot, has been unfairly criticized in the past, but in recent years it has been firmly re-established in Eliot's canon. This book argues that Eliot's entire body of work is a cohesive macrotext, with themes, motifs, patterns, and cultural and personal archetypes that recur with variations. "The Lifted Veil" serves as the keystone of this oeuvre.

A sequential approach to the story is facilitated by the use of a mimetic enunciation that mimics the gradual "definition of events, places, and characters as they have appeared to the narrating 'I' over time until the moment of enunciation.

Contextualizing "The Lifted Veil" involves placing it within Eliot's oeuvre and against the backdrop of Victorian mid-century fiction. In a broader sense, it can be seen as intersecting various contemporary genres and subgenres, such as the European and American "literature of the veil," the archetypal icon of the femme fatale, and Wilkie Collins' "dead secret novels."

However, the most significant aspect that critical literature on "The Lifted Veil" has tended to overlook is the encryption of the experience of a failed religious conversion and the foreshadowing of Daniel Deronda, the hero of Eliot's final novel, in search of a spiritual and racial identity.

In conclusion, "The Lifted Veil" is a remarkable novel that deserves to be re-evaluated and appreciated for its complexity, richness, and enduring relevance. Its exploration of themes such as religion, identity, and morality continues to resonate with readers today, making it a vital contribution to the literary canon."

Weight: 612g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032156422