In 1884, Émile Zola wrote the preface to the catalogue for a retrospective exhibition of Édouard Manet's paintings. 'Forget ideas of perfection and of the absolute', the author implored: 'don't believe that something is beautiful because it is…
The obvious monomaniac in Middlemarch is Casaubon, determined and devoted to writing his 'Key to All Mythologies'. This, his idée fixe, orders his world and certainly his relationship with his wife Dorothea, who seems an unwitting victim of his…
