George Elliot, among other British women writers, embraced German culture because her own culture was unwelcoming for female writers. George Elliot (then Mary Ann Evans) grew as a writer after she eloped with George Henry Lewes to Weimar. Having had no training in Greco-Roman traditions prevalent in Britain, Elliot found her literary foundation in the German literary canon. She was not shunned for being a woman in a non-standard relationship in polite German society, and she was free to hone her talents and branch out of translating German literature. Read full article here
Research
Researcher uses AI to make texts that are thousands of years old readable
The Gilgamesh Epic, the oldest work of world literature, has been brought back to life by LMU researchers in the Electronic Babylonian Literature project. Using their new Fragmentarium tool, they have discovered hundreds of manuscripts, including the most recent tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic which dates from 130 BC – thousands of years after the earliest known version. This shows how highly valued the Epic was, even at a late period. With the public release of the Fragmentarium, anyone can now explore the thousands of cuneiform fragments and explore the ancient Babylonian literature. Read full article here