George Eliot, Edward Said, and Romantic Zionism

Abstract: This essay re-examines George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda by way of Edward’s Said’s readings, and argues that in this novel Eliot helps usher into being a Zionism infused with the ideas and feelings of an earlier generation of British Romantics. With allusions to Romantics like Walter Scott and William Wordsworth, Eliot’s literary rendering of Zionism includes Romanticism’s elements of fellow-feeling and providential futurity. The novel’s reception by European Zionists facilitated the mixing of Romantic ideology into Zionism; understanding these future-oriented and sympathetic elements helps us better understand Zionism more generally.