SOURCE: “Nations and Novels: Disraeli, George Eliot, and Orientalism,” in Victorian Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3, Spring, 1992, pp. 256-75.

In the essay that follows, Brantlinger studies the relationship between “romantic versions of ‘orientalism’” and depictions of nationalism in Disraeli's Young England trilogy and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda.

Both Disraeli's Young England trilogy (especially Coningsby and Tancred) and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda deal self-consciously with nationalism in ways that make them interesting test-cases for the equation between novels and nationalism. Coningsby appears to be a straightforward representative of the high line of “political novel” (as described by Morris Speare and Christopher Harvie). But “power breeds resistance,” Foucault declared, and resistance to straightforward ideological interpellation is registered in a number of surprising ways in Disraeli's novel, not least through its assertion of the racial superiority of “Hebrew intellect.” A similar recourse to Jewish history and racial pride as a way to critique...