ジョージ・エリオットにみる科学の受容と懐疑―『ミドルマーチ』医師リドゲートのテクストを読む―その1

We aim at clarifying how scientific world view and its methods are penetrated into the text of Middlemarch, and how scientific way of thinking and language contribute to changing the structure and style of the English novel. With this sense of awareness in view, we try to make clear how George Eliot attempts to reconcile the conflict between her cherished Christian outlook and terminology with the method of verifying hypotheses through experiments. Among the author's fictional presentations, we find that a heated discussion between biblical language and physiological, psychological one is evident in the protagonists portraits. For an example of this, we take up specific passages of Lydgate's delineation, and analyze how the novelist explored an innovative method of enlarging the dimension in character portrait.