Charles Dickens as an Agent of Change

Joachim Frenk, Lena Steveker, Joachim Frenk, Lena Steveker

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781501736285
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501736308
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

Sixteen scholars from across the globe come together in Charles Dickens as an Agent of Change to show how Dickens was (and still is) the consummate change agent. His works, bursting with restless energy in the Inimitable's protean style, registered and commented on the ongoing changes in the Victorian world while the Victorians' fictional and factional worlds kept (and keep) changing. The essays from notable Dickens scholars—Malcolm Andrews, Matthias Bauer, Joel J. Brattin, Doris Feldmann, Herbert Foltinek, Robert Heaman, Michael Hollington, Bert Hornback, Norbert Lennartz, Chris Louttit, Jerome Meckier, Nancy Aycock Metz, David Paroissien, Christopher Pittard, and Robert Tracy—suggest the many ways in which the notion of change has found entry into and is negotiated in Dickens' works through four aspects: social change, political and ideological change, literary change, and cultural change. An afterword by the late Edgar Rosenberg adds a personal account of how Dickens changed the life of one eminent Dickensian.

Index

Adorno, Theodor W., 139

aesthetics, xvi, 37, 44, 129, 131, 145, 161–62, 166, 167n12

aetiology, mythological, 90

agency, 77, 80. See also power

Aggie (Irish maid), 213–14, 216

allegory, 64, 130, 165–66

alliteration, 115, 117, 119

All the Year Round, 21

Altick, Richard D., 191

America, 75, 180–81

“Amusements of the People, The” (Dickens), 161–62

anacrusis, 116

anagnorisis, 131

analyses, character: Arthur Clennam, 146–50; Eugene Wrayburn, 150–54

anaphora, 115, 119

Andersen, Hans Christian, xvii, 205–9, 213–18; “Visit to Charles Dickens in the Summer of 1857, A,” 209

Andersen’s English (Barry), xvii, 205–18

Andrews, Malcolm, xvi, 99–110

anti-Semitism, 151

argument, from design, 78. See also patterns

Arnold, Matthew, 44, 137, 160; “Hebraism and Hellenism,” 44

arrangement, physiognomic, 85–90, 93–94

artists: and social change, 34–45, 49–50; and understanding patterns of life, 38–42

Attridge, Derek, 124n8

audiences, theater, 193–94

Australia, 137–38

Bagehot, Walter, 103

Baker, Ernest, The History of the English Novel, 149

Bardell, Martha, 3–4, 6–8

Barnaby Rudge (Dickens), 111, 118, 135

Barry, Sebastian, xvii, 205, 209–10, 212, 215–18; Andersen’s English, xvii, 205–18

bastard, 132–33

Battle of Life, The (Dickens), 195

Bauer, Matthias, xvi, 111–25

beats, 114–19, 122, 124n8. See also offbeats; rhythm

Beattie, James, The Mins...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Changing Dickens
• I. Dickens and Social Change
• II. Dickens and Changes of Power
• III. Dickens and Literary Change
• IV. Dickens and Changes in Popular Culture and in the Theater
• How to Read Dickens in English: A Last Retrospect
• Index