How Middlemarch drew on The Divine Comedy
A documented line of influence: George Eliot demonstrably engaged Dante Alighieri’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri · 1320
MedievalThe influenced
Middlemarch
George Eliot · 1872
The Age of the NovelRelevance
7/10
On Middlemarch’s page
- Eliot, a lifelong reader of Dante in Italian, threads the Divine Comedy through Middlemarch as a metaphor for moral growth wrung out of suffering
- Chapter 19 carries a Purgatorio VII epigraph — the slothful soul, cheek on palm — framing Dorothea's disillusioning Roman honeymoon
- Knowing Dante's terraces of purgation deepens what Eliot is doing with provincial ambition and slow, painful change
On The Divine Comedy’s page
- Eliot read Dante in the original Italian, and the Comedy runs under Middlemarch as a recurring figure for moral growth earned through suffering
- Chapter 19 — the start of Dorothea's Roman honeymoon — opens with an epigraph from Purgatorio VII, the slothful soul resting cheek on palm
- Click through to see Dante set beside Eliot's other chapter-heads (Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Chaucer), the company she builds her novel from