DICKENS QUARTERLY最新文献

Abstract:

Dickens plays off the strange hybrid nature of hair throughout his fiction. Hair is both alive and dead, public but also private, part of and not part of the body. Dickens uses hair to create both comedy and pathos, and it projects key aspects of many characters while simultaneously defying their control. Through hair, Dickens raises epistemological questions about the human tendency to categorize the world in binaries, and he suggests that all such categories misrepresent reality and fail to capture the complexity of human experience.

Abstract:

This article brings a creative–critical approach to bear on my long, and evolving, relationship with Dickens. Through examining the tenacious grip that Dickens has had on my imaginative, emotional, and professional lives, I explore the conundrum of continuing to admire a writer whose ubiquity, personal history, and even style can sometimes cause embarrassment to contemporary publics. In the face of such feelings, and my ambivalence about literary hero-worship, I make a case for Dickens’s unique power and lasting relevance. I explore how Dickens has shaped my creative imagination, education, and work as a university lecturer, and how his writing continues to impact on the lives of friends, family, and students. The article takes the form of a creative–critical personal essay, combining autobiographical accounts of growing up in Dickens’s Kent, and of engaging with Great Expectations at different life stages, with the scholarly perspectives that underpin my publications and university teaching.

Abstract:

Taking the experience of teaching Dickens in Brazil as a point of departure, this essay proposes a brief overview of the novelist’s initial reception in the South American country as part of an ongoing investigation of his multi-layered influence on Brazilian culture from the nineteenth century to the present day. Dickens’s impact on Brazilian publishing and pop culture ranges from the many translated editions of his works to his influence over local writers and artists. The second half of the essay produces a case study of teaching Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities to a class of undergraduate students in Rio de Janeiro, arguing for the importance of allowing students to respond creatively to literary works in an academic setting.

Abstract:

Inspired by a teaching experience in which a group of students equated the mob violence of the French Revolution with the contemporary phenomenon of “cancel culture,” this article considers the ways in which Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities incorporates a consideration of the foundations and limits of celebrity power. By examining contemporary studies of the history and significance of “cancellation,” we can understand their relevance to a Dickens who was anxious about maintaining his celebrity status and controlling his image amid a marital scandal that threatened his ability to do both. Read through this lens, the experience of Doctor Manette, a character who uses his celebrity to protect his loved ones and whose celebrity power is then turned against him, speaks to our present moment as Dickens’s expression of concern at what might happen when a previously adoring public takes the reins of reputation from the prominent.

Abstract:

Classic novels retold for children have received limited scholarly attention. Often cheaply printed, the interest they arouse is also transient: child readers become adults and either lose interest or move on to the unabridged text. Despite their transience and ephemerality, “classic” novels rewritten for children, especially retellings of Dickens, merit scholarly examination. These retellings appeal to child readers by centring the plots that revolve around child characters, shaping the popular imagination and reception history of these works. Since their initial publication, Dickens’s novels have been adapted, abridged, and anthologized for young readers by editors and publishers with various motives: to profit off Dickens’s fame, to promote literacy, and to support social change. Texts that rewrite “classic” authors like Dickens for young audiences reveal our cultural assumptions and anxieties about literacy.

Abstract:

Only by recognizing that Dickens’s novels not only teach us a great deal about Victorian England, but also about our lives in the here and now, can we remain vibrantly one of Dickens’s “publics.” We must transcend the usual “wisdom of the head,” the traditional academic study of his novels, and connect with the “wisdom of the heart” as well, the meaningful student-centred ways that his texts resonate in actual everyday lives – pedagogical advice that Dickens himself famously proffered in Hard Times. In my recent course, “Dickens, Disney, and Popular Culture,” my students and I did just that, discovering both Dickens, and his continuing influence on our lives, together during a memorable semester.

Abstract:

“Dickensian Dimensions” makes use of Dickens’s manuscript revisions to uncover the extra dimensions of emotional depth and temporal complexity that his sentences acquire in the immediate midst of composition. When the effects of those little changes were offered to a group of serious ordinary readers in the UK, their responses to selected passages from David Copperfield showed how much the tiny revisions could matter emotionally. The second part of the essay considers revised passages from Dickens’s next first-person narrator, Esther Summerson of Bleak House. We suggest that Esther’s apparently coy evasions can be more sympathetically read as writing problems stemming from her existential situation as a virtual non-person.

• The Dickens Society Prizes

The David Paroissien Prize

The David Paroissien Prize is awarded each year to the best peer-reviewed essay on Dickens published in a journal or edited collection. The Prize is named for David Paroissien, a founding member of the Dickens Society and also the founder of Dickens Quarterly, which he edited from its first issue in 1984 until his final issue in December 2019. As an editor he was rigorous, tactful, and generous, particularly with younger scholars. Under his direction, Dickens Quarterly attracted contributions from Dickens scholars around the world and became a leading venue for new work in the field.

To nominate (or self-nominate) an essay for the Paroissien Prize, please provide a copy of the essay and a cover email giving the name, email address, and institutional affiliation (if any) of its author. For the 2023 competition (essays published 1 January 2023 – 31 December 2023), send these materials to the Society Secretary at dickenssocietysecretary@gmail.com by 31 January 2024. A three-person committee comprised of Officers and/or Trustees will judge submissions. Please note that, in determining an essay's eligibility for a given year, the actual date of appearance is what matters, not the nominal date of the journal issue, since it is common for journals to lag behind their publication date. Any author may be nominated for this Prize, whether or not they are a Society member. The Prize carries a cash award of $500 and waives the registration fee for the Symposium at which the recipient will be recognized.

The Partlow Prize

The Partlow Prize may be in the form of either one stipend of $500 or two of $300 (if two recipients are chosen), and is intended to defray costs of attending the Dickens Symposium, in order to deliver a paper on any aspect of Dickens's life or work. The registration fee and cost of the Dickens Dinner will also be waived. Eligibility is restricted to students (graduate or undergraduate), independent scholars, and non-tenured faculty. Candidates should submit a CV and a completed paper of 20 minutes' duration, to the organizer by the requested date. Should the paper be of publishable quality, Dickens Quarterly shall have first right of refusal. [End Page 519]