Praga Magica: Prague as a Place of Memory and Vision in George Eliot, Anthony Trollope and George Sand
Praga Magica: Prague as a Place of Memory and Vision in George Eliot, Anthony Trollope and George Sand

Summary/Abstract: George Eliot and Anthony Trollope made short visits to Prague in the mid-19th century and were fascinated by such places as the Jewish Quarter with its old synagogue or Charles Bridge with its Baroque statues. They used these motifs in some of their works: Eliot in The Lifted Veil and Daniel Deronda and Trollope in Nina Balatka. Their portrayal of Prague, however, is very much based on the image of Praga magica, the Prague of legends, mysteries and magic. This article argues that the shift of focus from the Jewish Prague to the statue of St John of Nepomuk, which appears in The Lifted Veil and in Nina Balatka, might have been motivated not only by their admiration of the bridge decorations which they saw during their visits but also by the semantically rich motif of the saint’s statue in George Sand’s Consuelo, a novel which was very popular in Britain at that time.

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