Some Keywords in Dickens

Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, Nathalie Vanfasse, Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, Nathalie Vanfasse

• Publisher: V&R Unipress
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9783847113157
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783847013150
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Comics & Graphic Novels Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume shows how highly conscious Dickens was of words – of their meaning of course, and of the ideas they conjured up, but also of their very substance, texture, plasticity, visuality, and resonance, as well as their interactions with other words, and with their cultural environment. Each keyword is treated not as a semantic unit with a fixed meaning but rather as a flexible linguistic construct. Some keywords are just a word, a characteristic or even idiosyncratic lexical unit; some are treated as a load-bearing conceptual category or theme; some disintegrate into noise, complicating readers' assumptions about what a keyword must be. The focus shifts from "word" at micro- to macro-levels of signification, at times denoting wider cultural usage. Dynamic relations, oppositions, correlations and overlappings result from these individualized reading journeys, creating unforeseen and rich systems of meaning.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Body
• Acknowledgements
• Michael Hollington / Francesca Orestano / Nathalie Vanfasse: Introduction
• Victor Sage (University of East Anglia): “Boy” in Dickens. Introductory: Between Description and Name
• Jeremy Parrott (University of Buckingham): Charles Dickens as “Conductor”: an Exploration of Meanings, Roles and Associations
• Nathalie Vanfasse (LERMA, Aix-Marseille Université): Revisiting Debt, Debtors and Indebtedness in Little Dorrit
• Peter Merchant (Canterbury Christ Church University): “Found Out”: Dickens and the Dread of Discovery
• Ewa Kujawska-Lis (University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland): Hands in Great Expectations: Some Narrative Uses
• Nathalie Jaëck (CLIMAS, Université Bordeaux Montaigne): “Hoorroar!”: Dickens's Political, Epistemological and Aesthetic Rehabilitation of Noises
• Céline Prest (Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3): “It's a monomania with [Krook] to think he is possessed of documents”: Paper Obsession and Possession in Bleak House (1852–1853)
• Dominic Rainsford (Aarhus University): “Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz
• Magdalena Pypeć (University of Warsaw): Opium as a Keyword in Dickens’s Novels
• Maria Teresa Chialant (University of Salerno, Italy): Play in The Old Curiosity Shop
• Francesca Orestano (Università degli Studi di Milano): Prison
• Michael Hollington (Life Member, Clare Hall, Cambridge University): River and Text in Three Mature Novels by Charles Dickens
• Lillian Nayder (Bates College): Sideways in Dickens
• Jeremy Tambling (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw): “What is called taste is only another name for fact”: Two Dickens Keywords
• Michael Eaton (dramatist): The Worldly World of George Silverman
• Notes on Contributors
• Index