Abstract:Little Dorrit's first character introduced is none other than its devilish antagonist, Monsieur Rigaud. One of the villain's defining characteristics is his tendency to operate under several other names–"Blandois" and "Lagnier"–which are implied to be disguise aliases. Given Dickens's historical attention to character names, this case presents an entry point to ascertain covert authorial intentions behind Rigaud's portrayal. Considering these multiple identities in light of Dickens's naming habits, this article finds patterns connecting their etymologies to the villain's characterizing details, Little Dorrit's themes, and Dickens's political views. The study describes a subtext making Rigaud not just a pervasive caricature of Victorian England's vain bourgeoisie, but also a portrait of corruption in the pre-reform era of politics. It concludes that when the lineaments of this broader symbolic form converge in a single character, the resulting shape is a damning silhouette of revolutionary cause and effect.
{"title":"Etymological Co-Conspirators: The Names of Little Dorrit's Rigaud","authors":"Wesley Chai","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0039","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Little Dorrit's first character introduced is none other than its devilish antagonist, Monsieur Rigaud. One of the villain's defining characteristics is his tendency to operate under several other names–\"Blandois\" and \"Lagnier\"–which are implied to be disguise aliases. Given Dickens's historical attention to character names, this case presents an entry point to ascertain covert authorial intentions behind Rigaud's portrayal. Considering these multiple identities in light of Dickens's naming habits, this article finds patterns connecting their etymologies to the villain's characterizing details, Little Dorrit's themes, and Dickens's political views. The study describes a subtext making Rigaud not just a pervasive caricature of Victorian England's vain bourgeoisie, but also a portrait of corruption in the pre-reform era of politics. It concludes that when the lineaments of this broader symbolic form converge in a single character, the resulting shape is a damning silhouette of revolutionary cause and effect.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44389164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Narrative Bonds: Multiple Narrators in the Victorian Novel by Alexandra Valint (review)","authors":"Kathy Rees","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0044","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41759641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This paper considers Dickens's story "The Italian Prisoner" to argue that the author's reluctance to write on the Italian Risorgimento was not due to opportunism on his part. Dickens wished the Neapolitan prisoners could speak for themselves and only when he understood no story was forthcoming, did he set about writing it. The story eventually focuses around a huge bottle of wine that an ex-prisoner entrusts to the narrator to take back to his benefactor in England. The bottle becomes a symbol of the difficulties any narrator faces when seeking to bring a true story from one culture into another.
{"title":"\"If the true story of the matter is to be told\": Dickens and the Neapolitan Prisoners","authors":"Eleonora Gallitelli","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0041","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper considers Dickens's story \"The Italian Prisoner\" to argue that the author's reluctance to write on the Italian Risorgimento was not due to opportunism on his part. Dickens wished the Neapolitan prisoners could speak for themselves and only when he understood no story was forthcoming, did he set about writing it. The story eventually focuses around a huge bottle of wine that an ex-prisoner entrusts to the narrator to take back to his benefactor in England. The bottle becomes a symbol of the difficulties any narrator faces when seeking to bring a true story from one culture into another.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41593820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article explores how the campaign for, and changes to, the matrimonial and divorce laws of England in 1857 were approached in one very discrete area of Dickens's professional output, namely in his role as the "Conductor" of Household Words. It examines how the issue of divorce and the campaign for reform of the divorce laws, as well as the concurrent campaign for reform of married women's property rights, were approached from a journalistic perspective, both in Household Words and the Household Narrative of Current Events, whether an opinion as to the justice or efficacy of the divorce laws as they existed at the start of the run of Household Words in 1850 was expressed, and how the proposed changes to extant divorce laws were covered in Dickens's periodical publication.
{"title":"\"Misfortnet Marriages\": Discussing Divorce in Household Words","authors":"Deborah Siddoway","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0038","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores how the campaign for, and changes to, the matrimonial and divorce laws of England in 1857 were approached in one very discrete area of Dickens's professional output, namely in his role as the \"Conductor\" of Household Words. It examines how the issue of divorce and the campaign for reform of the divorce laws, as well as the concurrent campaign for reform of married women's property rights, were approached from a journalistic perspective, both in Household Words and the Household Narrative of Current Events, whether an opinion as to the justice or efficacy of the divorce laws as they existed at the start of the run of Household Words in 1850 was expressed, and how the proposed changes to extant divorce laws were covered in Dickens's periodical publication.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49557121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article interprets Dombey and Son using several methodological practices not typically combined in Dickens scholarship: digital computation, disability studies, and historicist close reading. It first contextualizes Dickens's usage of the idiomatic expression "right-hand man" six times in only this one of his fictional works. Such usage is all the more exceptional because Dombey is the only Dickensian novel in which a major character–Captain Cuttle–conspicuously has no right hand; he has a hook, along with various other prosthetics. At this article's core, though, is a literary-historical and cultural argument–not a statistical one. My central contention is that Cuttle's obvious physical impairment paradoxically highlights the multiple meanings cohering around "right-hand manness," but, moreover, that such flexible idiomaticity informs the ways in which Dombey and Son explores its deepest and most interrelated themes of succession and surrogacy, pride and pathos, commerce and commitment, ability and disability.
{"title":"Idiomatic Surrogacy and (Dis)Ability in Dombey and Son","authors":"Peter J. Capuano","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0037","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article interprets Dombey and Son using several methodological practices not typically combined in Dickens scholarship: digital computation, disability studies, and historicist close reading. It first contextualizes Dickens's usage of the idiomatic expression \"right-hand man\" six times in only this one of his fictional works. Such usage is all the more exceptional because Dombey is the only Dickensian novel in which a major character–Captain Cuttle–conspicuously has no right hand; he has a hook, along with various other prosthetics. At this article's core, though, is a literary-historical and cultural argument–not a statistical one. My central contention is that Cuttle's obvious physical impairment paradoxically highlights the multiple meanings cohering around \"right-hand manness,\" but, moreover, that such flexible idiomaticity informs the ways in which Dombey and Son explores its deepest and most interrelated themes of succession and surrogacy, pride and pathos, commerce and commitment, ability and disability.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43873158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dickens in the Heart of Medicine: Implications for Today Medical Practice by Ernst E. van der Wall, and: Bleak Health: The Medical History of Charles Dickens and his Family by Nicholas Cambridge (review)","authors":"William F. Long","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0043","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44633834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:One of the most important topics in works of existentialist literature and philosophy is surely the state that we can call angst or existential anxiety. Nowhere is this state more clearly and accurately described than in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol–a work not usually defined as existentialist writing at all. Analyzing this work, I demonstrate that it nonetheless has to be considered a pioneering work of existentialism given that we can clarify the state of angst or existential anxiety through its analysis with a transparency seen nowhere else, and can even correct misconceptions pertaining to this state that have been able to spread given the exclusion of A Christmas Carol from almost all discussions of existentialism and its major themes.
{"title":"On Angst, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Reading Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol as an Existentialist Work","authors":"Matthew Coate","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0036","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:One of the most important topics in works of existentialist literature and philosophy is surely the state that we can call angst or existential anxiety. Nowhere is this state more clearly and accurately described than in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol–a work not usually defined as existentialist writing at all. Analyzing this work, I demonstrate that it nonetheless has to be considered a pioneering work of existentialism given that we can clarify the state of angst or existential anxiety through its analysis with a transparency seen nowhere else, and can even correct misconceptions pertaining to this state that have been able to spread given the exclusion of A Christmas Carol from almost all discussions of existentialism and its major themes.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41592826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spectral Dickens: The Uncanny Forms of Novelistic Characterization by Alexander Bove (review)","authors":"G. Piggott","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0042","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44567927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：