Friday Explorations Read Aloud: "Middlemarch" by George Eliot, Read by Joseph Coté

Every Friday, at 11:00 am, on the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page, the library will stream a brand new recording of local thespian, Joseph Coté reading aloud selections from a wide variety of fascinating and entertaining books of fiction and non-fiction.

For September 6, Coté will read aloud from George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life.

Summary: A novel by English author George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, Middlemarch appeared in eight installment volumes in 1871 and 1872. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, in 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters.

Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Despite comic elements, Middlemarch uses realism to encompass historical events: the 1832 Reform Act, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. It looks at medicine of the time and reactionary views in a settled community facing unwelcome change.

Eliot began writing the two pieces that formed the novel in 1869–1870 and completed it in 1871. Initial reviews were mixed, but it is now seen widely as her best work and one of the great English novelsThe subtitle—”A Study of Provincial Life”—has been seen as significant. One critic views the unity of Middlemarch as achieved through “the fusion of the two senses of ‘provincial'”:on the one hand it means geographically “all parts of the country except the capital”; and on the other, a person who is “unsophisticated” or “narrow-minded”.

Thoughts to share? Book ideas to suggest?
Contact Joseph at [email protected]