Abstract:This paper documents a previously unremarked topical allusion in "Vauxhall-Gardens by Day," a sketch by Boz first published in the Morning Chronicle on 26 October 1836. It relates to two high-profile ballooning incidents which occurred the previous August, press notice of the consequences of which remained current through the rest of the year. Both incidents involved the notoriously flamboyant and eccentric exiled Duke of Brunswick.
{"title":"Boz and the Ballooning Duke of Brunswick","authors":"William F. Long","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0035","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper documents a previously unremarked topical allusion in \"Vauxhall-Gardens by Day,\" a sketch by Boz first published in the Morning Chronicle on 26 October 1836. It relates to two high-profile ballooning incidents which occurred the previous August, press notice of the consequences of which remained current through the rest of the year. Both incidents involved the notoriously flamboyant and eccentric exiled Duke of Brunswick.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"39 1","pages":"423 - 438"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45238581","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:In The Waste Land's centenary year, this article considers Dickens's pervasive impact on T. S. Eliot's poem. Echoes and allusions in The Waste Land, as well as direct references in Eliot's letters, range across Dickens's work from Pickwick Papers to Our Mutual Friend. Attention is paid, for example, to precedents for Eliot's "waste land" in Dickens's urban landscapes; a shared interest, in Dombey and "A Game at Chess," in Shakespeare's Cleopatra; images of imprisonment; and the "Problem of Dickensian Allusion" that arises from the sheer extent of the connections that might be made.
{"title":"Dickens and The Waste Land","authors":"M. Hollington","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0040","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In The Waste Land's centenary year, this article considers Dickens's pervasive impact on T. S. Eliot's poem. Echoes and allusions in The Waste Land, as well as direct references in Eliot's letters, range across Dickens's work from Pickwick Papers to Our Mutual Friend. Attention is paid, for example, to precedents for Eliot's \"waste land\" in Dickens's urban landscapes; a shared interest, in Dombey and \"A Game at Chess,\" in Shakespeare's Cleopatra; images of imprisonment; and the \"Problem of Dickensian Allusion\" that arises from the sheer extent of the connections that might be made.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"39 1","pages":"513 - 523"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48395656","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:Dickens's works, like those of many of his contemporaries, are haunted by Europe's racial other(s). Taking A Tale of Two Cities and "A Christmas Tree" as its primary examples, this paper traces how the racial imagination prefigures characters, subjectivities and narratives in a manner that produces the Other as the double subject of fascination and horror. Informed by anticolonial critique and Freudian psychoanalysis, this paper moves beyond the calling out of Dickens's racism to reading the ways whereby fascination with the Other resolves, in the Dickensian text, the repression that produces racial horror.Although fascination has always been integral to the colonial animus to acquire and dominate, I read, in certain moments of Dickens's texts, a healthier prospect for giving in to the Other's mystery, and I propose the field of Dickensian Studies as a field wherein mutual fascination can be liberated from the epistemic yoke of Orientalism and colonialism.
{"title":"Fascination and Terror: Orientalism and the Return of the Repressed in A Tale of Two Cities and \"A Christmas Tree\"","authors":"A. Dardir","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0027","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Dickens's works, like those of many of his contemporaries, are haunted by Europe's racial other(s). Taking A Tale of Two Cities and \"A Christmas Tree\" as its primary examples, this paper traces how the racial imagination prefigures characters, subjectivities and narratives in a manner that produces the Other as the double subject of fascination and horror. Informed by anticolonial critique and Freudian psychoanalysis, this paper moves beyond the calling out of Dickens's racism to reading the ways whereby fascination with the Other resolves, in the Dickensian text, the repression that produces racial horror.Although fascination has always been integral to the colonial animus to acquire and dominate, I read, in certain moments of Dickens's texts, a healthier prospect for giving in to the Other's mystery, and I propose the field of Dickensian Studies as a field wherein mutual fascination can be liberated from the epistemic yoke of Orientalism and colonialism.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"39 1","pages":"338 - 358"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49228470","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 clarifies the origin and context of two frequently quoted statements concerning Dickens's attitude to Jews. They comprise the assertion that "Jews alone are excluded from the sympathising heart of Dickens," and the apparent response that his attitude to them was not "inimica." The first statement has been traced to an editorial in the 7 April 1854 issue of the short-lived London newspaper the Hebrew Observer. The second occurs in a previously uncollected letter from Dickens, reprinted on 12 April 1854 in the Hebrew Observer and the Jewish Chronicle. The statements appeared at a time when the Jewish community, pursuing emancipation, sought to present itself positively. The editorial comprises a disappointed account of Dickens's perceived past negativity towards Jews followed by a presumed (on the slimmest of evidence) change of heart. The letter replies to an invitation to attend a Jewish cultural event, Dickens's acceptance of which would have provided a welcome indication of support. Dickens's response was to deny that he was inimical towards Jews, and to decline the invitation.
{"title":"\"Mr. Charles Dickens and the Jews\": Tracing the Origin and Context of Two Statements","authors":"William F. Long","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0028","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper clarifies the origin and context of two frequently quoted statements concerning Dickens's attitude to Jews. They comprise the assertion that \"Jews alone are excluded from the sympathising heart of Dickens,\" and the apparent response that his attitude to them was not \"inimica.\" The first statement has been traced to an editorial in the 7 April 1854 issue of the short-lived London newspaper the Hebrew Observer. The second occurs in a previously uncollected letter from Dickens, reprinted on 12 April 1854 in the Hebrew Observer and the Jewish Chronicle. The statements appeared at a time when the Jewish community, pursuing emancipation, sought to present itself positively. The editorial comprises a disappointed account of Dickens's perceived past negativity towards Jews followed by a presumed (on the slimmest of evidence) change of heart. The letter replies to an invitation to attend a Jewish cultural event, Dickens's acceptance of which would have provided a welcome indication of support. Dickens's response was to deny that he was inimical towards Jews, and to decline the invitation.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"39 1","pages":"359 - 372"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44107489","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":"Victorian Negatives: Literary Culture and the Dark Side of Photography in the Nineteenth Century by Susan E. Cook (review)","authors":"Éadaoin Agnew","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0031","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"39 1","pages":"401 - 404"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43264090","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:Avoiding the easier options of ahistorical condemnation or contextual defense, this paper looks at "The Nobel Savage," and argues that Dickens attempts to negotiate a balance between the then-prevalent discourses on culture and civilization, and takes an occasional tumble in the process. What makes the essay significant today is not Dickens's colonial positions on the 'savages,' including their purported ethnography, or his socially progressive position on matters like the eradication of tyranny in Europe. Instead, what is significant is the way in which Dickens struggles against "an enormous superstition," which is one of the discourses he wishes to utter, but then, given the pressure of the discourses that utter him, he falls into errors that seem almost inevitable for a person of his time and place and almost monstrous to us today. The paper, then, looks at the great writer not just as one who writes in language, but also as one who is written by language in that very process.
{"title":"Dickens and the Noble Savage","authors":"T. Khair","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Avoiding the easier options of ahistorical condemnation or contextual defense, this paper looks at \"The Nobel Savage,\" and argues that Dickens attempts to negotiate a balance between the then-prevalent discourses on culture and civilization, and takes an occasional tumble in the process. What makes the essay significant today is not Dickens's colonial positions on the 'savages,' including their purported ethnography, or his socially progressive position on matters like the eradication of tyranny in Europe. Instead, what is significant is the way in which Dickens struggles against \"an enormous superstition,\" which is one of the discourses he wishes to utter, but then, given the pressure of the discourses that utter him, he falls into errors that seem almost inevitable for a person of his time and place and almost monstrous to us today. The paper, then, looks at the great writer not just as one who writes in language, but also as one who is written by language in that very process.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"39 1","pages":"269 - 275"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47798139","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:In this article I look at how Dickens's text and his illustrators' drawings work together to erase the racially complex reality of Victorian London. I explore how the representations of the chimney-sweep in a variety of genres situate the sweep at a nexus of anxieties about race and class. By looking at the history of representing the May Day Parade, which showed Black participants, I argue that when the parade appears in Dickens's work, there is a deliberate erasure of Black presence. I then trace the sweep in Dickensian illustration to show that every time the sweep appears they carry the visual markers of the sweep – burnished cap, brush, and often bag – to comfort the (white) viewer and reader that they are not seeing a Black child on the street.
{"title":"The Blackness of the Chimney Sweep: Dickens, Illustrators, and Erasing Racial Complexity","authors":"C. Lehmann","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0025","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this article I look at how Dickens's text and his illustrators' drawings work together to erase the racially complex reality of Victorian London. I explore how the representations of the chimney-sweep in a variety of genres situate the sweep at a nexus of anxieties about race and class. By looking at the history of representing the May Day Parade, which showed Black participants, I argue that when the parade appears in Dickens's work, there is a deliberate erasure of Black presence. I then trace the sweep in Dickensian illustration to show that every time the sweep appears they carry the visual markers of the sweep – burnished cap, brush, and often bag – to comfort the (white) viewer and reader that they are not seeing a Black child on the street.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"39 1","pages":"276 - 311"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49410838","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 essay takes Dickens and Thackeray on Jews in London and in Europe, as contrasts, and it investigates the claims made in his lifetime that Dickens was anti-Semitic, especially in the writing of Fagin in Oliver Twist, though attention is also given to Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend. The essay discusses the place given to Fagin in Dickens's autobiography relative to the blacking-factory, and also in the imagination of George Cruikshank, Dickens's illustrator for Oliver Twist. It traces also the qualities of grotesquery, excess and diabolism in Fagin, and its conclusion draws in the contrasted meanings of "cosmopolitan," both a citizen of the world, and one who is exiled, a stranger, and argues that Dickens gives place to the Jew as the latter.
{"title":"Dickens, Judaism, and Cosmopolitanism","authors":"J. Tambling","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0029","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay takes Dickens and Thackeray on Jews in London and in Europe, as contrasts, and it investigates the claims made in his lifetime that Dickens was anti-Semitic, especially in the writing of Fagin in Oliver Twist, though attention is also given to Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend. The essay discusses the place given to Fagin in Dickens's autobiography relative to the blacking-factory, and also in the imagination of George Cruikshank, Dickens's illustrator for Oliver Twist. It traces also the qualities of grotesquery, excess and diabolism in Fagin, and its conclusion draws in the contrasted meanings of \"cosmopolitan,\" both a citizen of the world, and one who is exiled, a stranger, and argues that Dickens gives place to the Jew as the latter.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"39 1","pages":"373 - 393"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45899713","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 provides an overview of Dickens's representations of race and racial difference in his fiction, letters and journalism, and it outlines the changing and sometimes contentious critical response to those representations and the claims made about them. It examines highlights and shifts in arguments on the subject of Dickens and race, particularly in light of the "Anti-racism Statement of the Charles Dickens Society" (2021) and current efforts to "undiscipline" Victorian Studies.
{"title":"Dickens and Race","authors":"L. Nayder","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2022.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2022.0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article provides an overview of Dickens's representations of race and racial difference in his fiction, letters and journalism, and it outlines the changing and sometimes contentious critical response to those representations and the claims made about them. It examines highlights and shifts in arguments on the subject of Dickens and race, particularly in light of the \"Anti-racism Statement of the Charles Dickens Society\" (2021) and current efforts to \"undiscipline\" Victorian Studies.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"39 1","pages":"242 - 268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42251753","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}