Agora Foundation Online Intensive -
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Thursday Evenings - September 19, 2024 to January 30, 2025
5:30-7:00PM Pacific

Dennis Gura

Sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull and Dennis Gura.

Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance?  Was the good or the evil genius dominant in those beams?  Probably the evil; else why was the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm?  Why was the wish to look again felt as coercion and not as a longing in which the whole being consents?

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Thus begins George Eliot’s last novel. Why did the author of the matchless Middlemarch at last turn her pen to one of the most vexing questions of the late nineteenth century and of all European history?  England had not only abolished slavery, but had emancipated, to one degree or another, its religious minorities over the preceding decades, and at the time of the novel’s publication, had a Jewish prime minister, albeit one who had converted to Anglicanism in boyhood. The sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been expelled from England en masse in 1290, almost six centuries before -- two centuries before their fellow Jews were expelled from Spain.  As a kind of historical exemplar for the protagonist of Middlemarch, the immediate predecessor to Daniel Deronda, Eliot had chosen Teresa of Avila, who was seen in the prelude of that novel in early girlhood ready to march to martyrdom against the Moors.   And yet religious fervor in great-souled Dorothea seemed only to fuel the moral ardor to stand on the side of justice for those who suffered under the stupidity of provincial prejudice.  Enter Deronda, wherein that most ancient European grudge, writ not only large but general, rooted in the rootless fantasy of religious fallacy, underlies the unease of a growingly comfortable society made secure by the exploits of a maritime empire – as it comes into the ken of one of the most acute observers of human character and psyche ever to write English prose. 

Online seminars in this series will take place on Thursday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees will be mailed the text. Sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull and Dennis Gura. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 3 CEU credits for participating. This sixteen-week series is $950. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $100 through a refund. Payment options are available.