Charles Dickens as an Agent of Change

Description

Sixteen scholars from across the globe come together in Charles Dickens as Agent of Change to show how Dickens was (and still is) the consummate change agent. His works, bursting with restless energy in the Inimitable's protean style, registered and commented on the ongoing changes in the Victorian world while the Victorians' fictional and factional worlds kept (and keep) changing. The essays from notable Dickens scholars—Malcolm Andrews, Matthias Bauer, Joel J. Brattin, Doris Feldmann, Herbert Foltinek, Robert Heaman, Michael Hollington, Bert Hornback, Norbert Lennartz, Chris Louttit, Jerome Meckier, Nancy Aycock Metz, David Paroissien, Christopher Pittard, and Robert Tracy—suggest the many ways in which the notion of change has found entry into and is negotiated in Dickens' works through four aspects: social change, political and ideological change, literary change, and cultural change. An afterword by the late Edgar Rosenberg adds a personal account of how Dickens changed the life of one eminent Dickensian. Review "An enjoyable and wide-ranging collection of articles exploring Dickens and change." ( English Studies ) "Excellent discussions of condition-of-England novels." ( CHOICE ) "This book will delight Dickens scholars and prove an asset to any university library.... It is one that will inspire readers to consider the changes the great writer has wrought in them, and that they, in their turn, may bring to Dickens scholarship." ( The Modern Language Review ) About the Author Joachim Frenk is Professor of British Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University. Lena Steveker is Assistant Professor of British Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University. CHARLES DICKENS AS AN AGENT OF CHANGE Contents Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: Changing Dickens joachim and lena steveker I. Dickens and Social Change Repetitions and Reversals: Patterns for Social Change in Pickwick Papers Three Revolutions: Alternate Routes to Social Change in Bleak House Dickens, Society, and Art: Change in Dickens’s View of Effecting Social Reform The World Changing Dickens, Dickens Changing the World II. Dickens and Changes of Power Parrots, Birds of Prey, and Snorting Cattle: Dickens’s Whig Agenda “The Tremendous Potency of the Small”: Dickens, the Individual, and Social Change in a Post-America, Post-Catastrophist Age Money, Power, and Appearance in Dombey and Son III. Dickens and Literary Change The Passing of the Pickwick Moment The Chimes and the Rhythm of Life Radical Dickens: Dickens and the Tradition of Romantic Radicalism Modern Characters in the Late Novels of Charles Dickens IV. Dickens and Changes in Popular Culture and in the Theater The Cultural Politics of Dickens’s Hard Times Conjuring Dickens: Magic, Intellectual Property, and The Old Curiosity Shop Popular Dickens: Changing Bleak House for the East End Stage The Frozen Deep: Gad’s Hill, June–July 1857 How to Read Dickens in English: A Last Retrospect Index