Dickens and the Imagined Child

ISBN-13: 9780367880064 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 226 str.

Peter Merchant; Catherine Waters

Opis

In Dickens and the Imagined Child, leading scholars explore the function of the child and childhood within Dickens’s imagination and reflect on the cultural resonance of his engagement with this topic. Part I begins by proposing a typology of the Dickensian child that is followed by discussions of specific child characters, while Part II focuses on

Spis treści

Part 1 The Dickensian Child: Dickens and the knowing child  Who stole the child?: missing babies and blank identities in early Dickens.  'No magic dwelling-place in magic story': time, memory and the enchanted children of Dombey and Son.  'In a state of bondage': the children of Bleak House.  Part 2 Childhood and Memory:  The adult narrator's memory of childhood in David's Esther's and Pip's autobiographies.  A Medway childhood: the Dickensian 'arriere-pays'?  'Ten thousand million delights': Charles Dickens and the childhood wonder of the pantomime clown.  'A kind of odour of Salem House': David Copperfield and Thomas Anstey Guthrie.  Part 3 Children, Reading and Writing:  Savage stories: Charles Dickens, 'The Noble Savage' and the childhood imagination.  Child readers in Dickens's novels.  Playful 'assumption': Dickens's early performative creativity and its influence on his sons' family newspaper, The Gad's Hill Gazette.

 

O autorze

Peter Merchant is Principal Lecturer in English at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, and Catherine Waters is Professor of Victorian Literature and Print Culture at the University of Kent, UK, and an Honorary Affiliate of the University of Sydney, Australia.