There are patterns of continuité discontinu (Derrida) in the figural transactions between human groups and between humans and animals in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda that remain underexamined. By emphasizing ironic incommensurability and difference, this essay seeks to reveal the logic of ungivenness organizing human interactions in a novel haunted by images of deep time and species extermination. Eliot’s interest in ancestrality and extinction was fueled by her readings in geology and biology (Darwin), but it also evinces a metaphysical concern with uncorrelated time (Kant) that is inseparable from her fascination with the idea of moral rarity.

This content is only available via PDF.
Spring 2018 © The Regents of the University of California
2018
You do not currently have access to this content.