Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Eliot's Double Mirror -- 2. Sappho's Apple -- 3. Lydgate Winces: Character and Realism -- 4. Hypocrisy and the Judgment of Men -- 5. Ladislaw -- 6. Myth, Middlemarch and the Mill: Out in Mid-Sea -- 7. Epigraphy: Beginnings and Ends -- Postscript: The Flute inside the Bell -- Bibliography -- List of Illustrations -- Index.
In Middlemarch, George Eliot draws a character passionately absorbed by abstruse allusion and obscure epigraphs. Casaubon's obsession is a cautionary tale, but Adam Roberts nonetheless sees in him an invitation to take Eliot's use of epigraphy and allusion seriously, and this book is an attempt to do just that.