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This essay is a meditation on the binary title of Middlemarch, and in particular on the first of the two semantic elements that comprise it. I coin the term “middleness” to describe the human state in the book, as it is explored “in the middest” both of time and space, and examine it along three axes, one temporal—to do with the consciousness of living in the middle of history—and two spatial. The first of these latter is horizontal, with reflections on the nature of the setting in the very centre of England, Loamshire or Warwickshire, and the psycho-geographical effects of this setting upon the characters in the novel; and the second is vertical, with reflections on the focus of persons standing essentially in the middle of the social hierarchy. I attempt to uncover discrimination between those characters who manage to achieve a chosen and considered position in relation to “middleness”—that is to say mediocritas in its Horatian sense—and those who are merely “mediocre” in its modern sense.

The aim of this paper is to explore the significance of sounds negative and sounds positive in Daniel Deronda, tracing a sequence of significant sounds from the near-silence of the opening scene in a gaming room to the jubilant licence of sound in the concluding wedding scene. It is particularly interested in a series of shrieks from the heroine, Gwendolen—three in number, at the charade, at the time of her wedding, and at the death of her husband—which mark points at which she recognises the terrible course in life on which she has launched herself. After the third of these, an alternative rhetoric of sound takes over, in which she is launched on a gradual purgatorial process of redemption. Le but de cet article est d’explorer la signification des sons négatifs et des sons positifs dans Daniel Deronda, en traçant une séquence de sons significatifs, depuis le quasi-silence de la scène d’ouverture dans une salle de jeu jusqu’à la licence jubilatoire du son dans la scène de mariage finale. Cette analyse s’intéresse particulièrement à une série de cris de Gwendolen — au nombre de trois, lancés lors de la mascarade, au moment de son mariage, et à la mort de son mari — qui ponctuent les moments clés du récit lors desquels l’héroïne reconnaît les terribles choix de vie qu’elle a effectués. Après le troisième cri, une nouvelle rhétorique du son s’impose progressivement, et accompagne Gwendolen dans son processus de rédemption purgatoire.

This paper examines the frequent use of the word ‘blighty’ in First World War poetry and prose to signify from the frontline trenches the longedfor world of home. A word of Anglo-Indian origin, the product of folk etymology, as unlettered soldiers convert ‘bilayati’ meaning ‘foreign’ into something that sounds more familiar in English, it retains its association with the speech of the common soldier in First World War poetry. It modulates in meaning, as the war gets increasingly desperate, and starts in poetry and elsewhere to refer to a relatively minor wound that will get you back home and out of the war. I examine this shift in a number of poets, notably Owen, Sassoon, and Gurney. I also examine the experience of ‘blighty’ from the other end of the telescope, so to speak. That is to say, from the perspective of women writers receiving their men at home and bidding them farewell for the last time. I illustrate such writing in the distinguished novel World Without End by Helen Thomas, the widow of the war poet Edward Thomas.

Cet article espère contribuer à la grande masse critique des experts sur la physiognomonie, ’science’ inspirée de Lavater, et Dickens, se concentrant principalement sur son rôle dans Bleak House. J’étudie les observateurs physiognomonistes qui réussissent dans le roman, comme Esther et Woodcourt, et ce qu’ils observent, à savoir bien entendu les visages mais aussi les manières et le langage corporel. J’explore également la physiognomonie des objets, construction d’une redoutable attaque de la façade victorienne. This essay hopes to add to the impressive array of criticism and scholarship about the ’science’ of physiognomy, derived from Lavater, in Dickens, focussing chiefly on its role in Bleak House. I survey the successful observers of physiognomy in the novel, such as Esther and Woodcourt, and what they observe—not just faces but ’manner’ or ’body language.’ I also explore the physiognomy of things, as this builds into a formidable indictment of the face of Victorian society.

Resume L’inspiration de ce texte remonte a une exposition qui s’est tenue a New York en 2011, Rooms with a View, et qui etait consacree a une image clef de la peinture du XIXe siecle, ou des personnes, surtout solitaires, surtout feminines, se trouvent debout pres d’une fenetre ouverte. J’essaie de montrer que ce motif est aussi tres present dans l’œuvre de Dickens, et que parmi les differents sens que l’on peut lui donner, il y a manifestement l’idee de la « persistance ». Je m’attache ici surtout a Little Dorrit, ou cette image a une importance particuliere, du fait que le roman se deroule principalement dans des prisons, reelles ou virtuelles. Des l’enfance, l’heroine se trouve constamment devant des fenetres ouvertes, et la patience de cette Griselda est recompensee a la fin.

Cet article essaie de relever quelques aspects d'un mouvement de pensée « matriarcale » du XXe siècle, parfois plutôt souterrain, et de montrer dans quelle mesure cette pensée fait partie du contexte du grand film des années soixante de François Truffaut. Il s'agit des hypothèses de Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887), juriste et archéologue suisse, qui proposait la théorie d'un matriarcat primitif à l'origine de la société humaine. Dans un premier temps, en Méditerranée par exemple, existait selon lui un système communiste où l'idée de propriété privée était absente, fondé sur l'« hétaïrisme », où les rapports sexuels, organisés selon les vœux des femmes, étaient complètement libres.The purpose of this paper is, first, to provide a brief sketch map of a comparative nature of some linked, formative appropriations in Germany and elsewhere in the early part of this century of the Swiss jurist and archaeologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887), famous for his influential but controversial theory of the precedence of primitive matriarchy over patriarchy in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.Este artίculo trata de señalar algunos aspectos de una corriente de pensamiento "matriarcal" del siglo veinte, a veces más bien subterránea, y muestra en qué medida dicho pensamiento forma parte del contexto de la famosa película de los años sesenta de François Truffaut. Se trata de las hipótesis de Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887), jurista y arqueólogo suizo, quien propuso la teoría de un matriarcado primitivo en el origen de la sociedad humana. En un primer momento, en la región mediterránea, por ejemplo, dice que existía un sistema comunista carente de la idea de propiedad privada, y basado en el "hetaerismo", en el que las relaciones sexuales, organizadas según el voto de las mujeres, eran completamente libres.

This is the revised version of a paper first gi ven at a conference to celebrate thecentenary of the birth of Walter Benjamin (1892-1990), which was held at theGoethe Institut in Sydney in July 1992. Given the rather specialised audience it initally addressed, it may be useful to append here some introductory remarks aimed at readers who may be less familiar with Benjamin's work, especially since the main focus here, the famous 'Arcades' project, remains untranslated. The Arcades project was the main focus of Benjamin 's work during the period of his exile from Nazi Germany, from 1933 until his suicide on the Franco-Spanish border at Port Bou. It began life in 1928 as an essay he intended to write in collaboration with his friend Franz Hessel (the 'Jules' ofTruffault' s Jules et Jim) on the historical and dialectical significance of the Paris arcades, a subject that seized his imagination in part through an impassioned reading of Aragon's surrealist portrayal, in 1£ Paysan de Paris, of a particular arcade that was about to be demolished: the Passage de I'Opera. Like many modernist projects, creative as well as intellectual -compare Musil's The Man Without Qualities, for instance-the subject just grew and grew, and perhaps could never have been brought to a conclusion. For its aim was to provide not only a complete historical and philosophical analysis of nineteenth-century capitalism through a method of microscopic focus upon empirical detail but also a psychological and political programme for 'waking up' outofthedream state of the consumer society.

(1993). MILTON, WALTER BENJAMIN, AND BAROQUE ALLEGORY. Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association: Vol. 79, No. 1, pp. 17-28.

This chapter approaches Jude the Obscure as an ironic text, and attempts to show how some of the major ironies in the novel might be illuminated by drawing upon a cluster of now fairly familiar ideas of Walter Benjamin’s, which have not, however, been widely used in Hardy criticism. The particular concepts employed here are drawn from three texts: ‘The Storyteller’ (1936), ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ (1940), and The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928). These three texts are taken up one by one to form a three-part examination of story, history, and allegory in Jude the Obscure. These are seen here as discernible and indeed critical discursive issues, implicitly linked within the novel, that can perhaps be thrown into sharper relief with the aid of the Benjamin perspective than has been hitherto achieved.