Dickens and Modernity

by John, Juliet

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Title Statements

Full title :Dickens and Modernity.

Summary

The scale of the 2012 bicentenary celebrations of Dickens's birth is testimony to his status as one of the most globally popular literary authors the world has ever seen. Yet Dickens has also become associated in the public imagination with a particular version of the Victorian past and with respectability. His continued cultural prominence and the "brand recognition" achieved by his image and images suggest that his vision reaches out beyond the Victorian period. Yet what is the relationship between Dickens and the modern world? Do his works offer a consoling version of the past or are they attuned to that state of uncertainty and instability we associate with the nebulous but resonant concept of modernity? This volume positions Dickens as both a literary and a cultural icon with a complex relationship to the cultural landscape in his own period and since. It seeks to demonstrate that oppositions which have pervaded approaches to Dickens - Victorian vs modern, artist vs entertainer, culture vs commerce - are false, by exploring the diversity and multiplicity of Dickens's textual and extra-textual lives. A specially commissioned Afterword by Florian Schweizer, Director of the Dickens 2012 celebrations, offers a fascinating insight into the shaping of this year-long public programme of commemoration of Dickens. Like the volume as a whole, it asks us to consider the nature of our connection with "this quintessentially Victorian writer" and what it is about Dickens that still appeals to people around the world. Professor Juliet John holds the Hildred Carlile Chair of English Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: Jay Clayton, Holly Furneaux, John Drew, Michaela Mahlberg, Juliet John, Michael Hollington, Joss Marsh, Carrie Sickmann, Kim Edwardes Keates, Dominic Rainsford, Florian Schweizer

Edition Statements

Publication Date:©2014

Publication Statements

Publisher(s):Boydell & Brewer Group Ltd
Place of Publication:Cambridge
Language:eng
Publication Date:©2014

The Physical Object

Description:1 online resource (196 pages)

Edition Identifiers

ISBN:9781782044413, 1782044418
oclc:ocn974633985
LC Classification:PN3499 .J384 2014
Dewey Decimal:809.3034

Cover -- Title Page -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on the Contributors -- Dedication -- Introduction -- Works cited -- Screenography -- Notes -- 1: The Dickens Tape: Affect and Sound Reproduction in The Chimes -- Works cited -- Notes -- 2: Dickens, Sexuality and the Body -- or, Clock Loving: Master Humphrey's Queer Objects of Desire -- By way of an abstract -- Reading Dickensian sex -- Surface loving in Master Humphrey's Clock -- Authorship and the affective experience of commodity culture -- Curious bodies: mannequin drag and dummy love -- The erotics of things -- Queer Dickens -- Works cited -- Notes -- 3: Texts, Paratexts and 'E-texts': the Poetics of Communication in Dickens's journalism -- Works cited -- Notes -- 4: Corpus Stylistics -- Dickens, Text-Drivenness and the Fictional World -- Introduction -- Corpus linguistic methods and the analysis of literary texts -- Clusters as building blocks for fictional worlds -- Interpreting external features of characters -- Textual cues for the creation of characters -- Suspensions -- extending the range of text-driven patterns -- Conclusions -- Works cited -- Notes -- 5: Things, Words and the Meaning…