Abstract
In 1868 George Eliot published The Spanish Gypsy, a ‘tragic play in blank verse, laid in 1487’.1 The poem in the original Blackwood edition has 28 lines to a page and runs into some 358 pages. It is divided into five separate books. Although the poem is in the main in blank verse it still retains the semblance of a dramatic production, mirroring its original draft inception, begun in 1864–5, laid aside by Eliot and rewritten and amplified in 1867 after a visit to Spain. There are explicit ‘scene-setting’ locations and character changes with ‘stage’ descriptions and ‘sets’ written into the text. The blank verse is largely as dialogue between characters, internal monologues of the principal protagonists with further insertion of longer narratives of geographical topography. Within the verse form of the poem are assimilated various lyrics and songs which are performed by the poet, Juan, and a lame boy, Pablo. These lyrics serve particular dramatic ends in linking the past, present and future events with an especial emotional resonance similar to the function of the chorus within classical literature. Other features of the composition include the rupture of the blank verse with a transition to prose narrative and the occasional use of the epistolary form to act as a device to bring together the various sub-plots within the piece.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
G. Haight, ed., Selections from George Eliot’s Letters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 313.
Some references to The Spanish Gypsy can be found in, for example, R. Ashton, Selected Critical Writings of George Eliot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
K. Brady, George Eliot (London: Macmillan Press, 1992)
G. Beer, George Eliot (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986).
G. Haight, George Eliot: A Biography (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985)
G. Haight, Selections from George Eliot: A Biography (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985)
F.B. Pinion, ed., A George Eliot Miscellany (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 127.
George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (London: William Blackwood & Sons, Standard Edition, 1868), Book 1, p. 147.
G. Potter, Annals of a Publishing House, Vol. 3 (London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1928), p. 376.
J. Wiesenfarth, George Eliot: A Writer’s Notebook, 1854–1879 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), p. xxix.
Carol Christ, ‘Victorian Masculinity & the Angel in the House’, in M. Vincinus, ed., A Widening Sphere (London: Methuen, 1980), pp. 147 and 149.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1998 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
West-Burnham, J. (1998). Fedalma — ‘The Angel of a Homeless Tribe’: Issues of Religion, Race and Gender in George Eliot’s Poetic Drama, The Spanish Gypsy. In: Hogan, A., Bradstock, A. (eds) Women of Faith in Victorian Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26749-1_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26749-1_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-26751-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-26749-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)