Teaching and Reading Dickens in Brazil: A Tale of Two Cities as a Case Study

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.