... Florentine government, established by Savonarola, between 1494 and 1498, which provided “an intellectual laboratory where various mixtures of humanist rhetoric, classical constitutional theory, and Christian and secular notions of fortune and virtue were refined, argued, and synthesized” ( Wihl 248...

... a virtual backdrop of historical figures, frequently drawn from the Renaissance and often from among the ranks of the Catholic saints, it seems significant that Romola, a fifteenth-centuryF loren- tine, rubs more than figurative shoulders with Savonarola, Machiavelli, and Piero di Cosimo and at a key...

... and inhabitants. For these critics, the use of what was generally described as “dryasdust” research—as in “long accounts of Florentine antiquities, and translations of sermons by Savonarola, and extracts from chronicles of processions”—appeared antithetical to the novel in general and the George Eliot novel...

..., which was a sort of sacred parody of the old,” in which the supporters of Savonarola burn objects they consider conducive to sin, including The Decameron (419). Romola admits she enjoys Boccaccio, but she defends the Bonfire to the painter Piero di Cosimo in language that resembles Mirah's...

... to the character in distress, not at all the type of person expected. Tryan is a far cry from the canting hypo- crite Janet has ardently imagined. Romola is surprised to see Savonarola's calm gIance, and the "impression from it was so new to her, that her anger sank ashamed as something irrelevant" (429...

... debates about Savonarola when Mrs. Ryder comes knocking with the supper tray. Next the cold descends through the third and fourth generations of the household, reducing the rector to snivels on the way. Worst of all, the cold pounces on the Ryders' invaluable servant Stella, a “treasure” unique among...

... to censure legal inequities indirectly by employing metaphorical substitutions for the constraints of marriage. George Eliot’s Romola is the closest and most interesting example. The structure of this novel aligns its eponymous heroine’s marital oppression with Girolamo Savonarola’s persecution...

..., in a set of characters throughout her fiction who do almost nothing but foresee: clairvoyants, such as Latimer in "The Lifted Veil," Mordecai in Daniel Deronda, and Dino and Savonarola in Romola. Latimer, who is cursed by knowing absolutely what lies ahead, longs for the feeling of possibility...