Contemporary Dickens

by Gillooly, Eileen

• ISBN13: 9780814202852
• ISBN10: 0814202853
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-12-15
• Publisher: Ohio State Univ Pr

Summary

Edited by Eileen Gillooly and Deirdre David,Contemporary Dickensis a collection of essays that presents some of the most intriguing work being undertaken in Dickens studies today. Through an emphasis on the nineteenth-century origins of our current critical preoccupations and ways of knowing, these essays reveal Dickens to be our contemporary. The contributors argue that such issues as gender and sexuality, environmentalism, and the construction of national identity were frequently explored and sometimes problematically resolved by Dickens himself. They also illuminate the importance of Dickensrs"s place in our current reassessment of critical methodologies. Drawing freely upon a variety of reading strategies (materialist, deconstructive, new historical, psychoanalytic, and feminist), the essays disclose new aspects of Dickensrs"s engagements with a number of Victorian concerns-moral philosophy, the psychology of the emotions, and life writing among them-that have once again emerged as significant objects of study in early-twenty-first century criticism. Looking at such familiar topics from fresh perspectives,Contemporary Dickensis an original and challenging contribution to Dickens studies in particular and Victorian criticism in general. Contemporary Dickenswill appeal to general readers and students of Victorian culture, as well as specialists in nineteenth-century literature, cultural studies, literary formalism, psychology, and gender studies.

Author Biography

Eileen Gillooly is Associate Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at   Columbia University and Associate Faculty in English and Women's Studies. Deirdre David is Professor Emerita of English, Temple University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. IX
Abbreviations	p. XI
Introduction	p. 1
Ethics And Narrative
Dickens, Secularism, and Agency	p. 13
Dickens and the Goods	p. 35
The Poverty of Charity: Dickensian Sympathy	p. 53
Uncanny Gifts, Strange Contagion: Allegory in The Haunted Man	p. 75
Storied Realities: Language, Narrative, and Historical Understanding	p. 93
Material Culture
So, This is Christmas	p. 113
Green Dickens	p. 131
Commodity Criticism and Victorian Thing Culture: The Case of Dickens	p. 152
Funny Money	p. 169
Enumeration and Exhaustion: Taking Inventory in The Old Curiosity Shop	p. 189
Contextual Reading
Paterfamilias	p. 209
Reading with Buzfuz: Dickens, Sexuality, Interrogation	p. 231
Little Dorrit's Theater of Rage	p. 245
The Making of Dickens Criticism	p. 264
Bibliography	p. 289
Notes on Contributors	p. 305
Index	p. 309
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