Other Dickens: Pickwick to Chuzzlewit

ISBN-13: 9780199261406 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 240 str.

John Bowen

Opis

In the first half of his career, Dickens wrote some of the most important novels of the nineteenth century, including The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Martin Chuzzlewit. They are exorbitant and transgressive books, with an inventive comic force unprecedented in the English novel. In this, the first full-length study for thirty years, John Bowen blends contemporary theory and historical awareness to argue that they are radical in both political and fictional terms. With a tactful use of contemporary critical theory, he shows how their often uncanny power disturbs and transforms our ways of understanding Dickens's work and his place in the history of the novel.

Recenzje

'takes ... readers ... into the books in intriguing ways. His forays into character names ... abetted by a rigorous exercise of the Oxford English Dictionary, are dazzling and delightful. What emerges is a fresh look at, and often a new appreciation for, the fertility of Dickens's imagination and the complexity of the novels. This is an indispensable work for all students of Dickens but most especially for those weary of studies that are mere mechanical application of the latest critical fad.'

O autorze

Dr John Bowen is Lecturer in English, University of Keele.