Dickens's London : Perception, Subjectivity and Phenomenal Urban Multiplicity

Julian Wolfreys

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781474429795
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Taking Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project as an inspiration, Dickens's London offers an exciting and original project that opens a dialogue between phenomenology, philosophy and the Dickensian representation of the city in all its forms. Julian Wolfreys suggests that in their representations of London - its streets, buildings, public institutions, domestic residences, rooms and phenomena that constitute such space - Dickens's novels and journalism can be seen as forerunners of urban and material phenomenology. While also addressing those aspects of the urban that are developed from Dickens's interpretations of other literary forms, styles and genres, Dickens's London presents in twenty-six episodes (from Banking and Breakfast via the Insolvent Court, Melancholy and Poverty, to Todgers and Time, Voice and Waking) a radical reorientation to London in the nineteenth century, the development of Dickens as a writer, and the ways in which readers today receive and perceive both.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations and Maps
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Abbreviations
• Advertisement
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Dickens’s London
• Arrivals (and Returns)
• Banking and Breakfast • Gray’s Inn Square, Temple Bar, Strand Lane
• Chambers • Holborn, Staple Inn, Furnival’s Inn
• Dismal • Little Britain, Smithfield, Saint Paul’s Cathedral
• Exteriors • Golden Square, Portland Place, Bryanstone Square
• Faded Gentility • Camden Town
• Gothic • Seven Dials, Walworth, Covent Garden, India House, Aldgate Pump, Whitechapel Church, Commercial Road, Wapping Old Stairs, St George’s in the East, Snow Hill, Newgate
• Heart • St Paul’s Cathedral
• Insolvent Court • Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn, Houndsditch, Tyburn, Whitechapel, St George’s Fields, Southwark
• Jaggers’s House • Gerrard Street, Soho
• Krook’s • by Lincoln’s Inn
• Life and Death • Snow Hill, the Saracen’s Head, Smithfield, Saint James’s Parish, Saint Sepulchre’s Church
• Melancholy • Leadenhall Street, Newgate, Lant Street, Borough, St George the Martyr
• Nocturnal • Millbank
• Obstructive • Tower Street Ward
• Poverty • Angel, Islington, St John’s Road, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Exmouth Street, Coppice Row, Hockley-in-the-Hole, Saffron Hill, Field Lane
• Quiet • Soho Square, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Old Square
• Resignation • Todgers’s, somewhere adjacent to the Monument
• Spring Evenings • London
• Time • The City, Coram’s Fields
• Unfi nished • Stagg’s Gardens, Camden Town
• Voice • Brentford, the Borough
• Walking • St Martin’s Court, Covent Garden
• X Marks the Spot • St Mary Axe
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Proper Names