| Unit name | Charles Dickens |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL39020 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. James |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Dickens has been regarded as both a crowd-pleasing sensationalist and a highly sophisticated literary innovator. This unit seeks to put these and other definitions of the author to the test. Among the topics for exploration will be: artifice and caricature; violence, the grotesque and the carnivalesque; issues of gender and sexuality; the figure of the orphan or neglected child; the conventions of melodrama; strategies of suspense; tropes and techniques of revelation and concealment; and the development of Dickens's narrative style from novel to novel. In addition to tracing the contemporary public and critical reception of Dickens's fictions and relating these to the works of his peers, the course will draw upon modern critical preoccupations, such as narrative theories, gender theories and psychoanalysis.
Aims:
Through a chronologically ordered study of at least five of Dickens's novels (and some of his short fiction and journalism), this unit will allow students to explore in depth the development of the career of one of English Literatures finest and most distinctive writers. Preconceptions about both the Dickensian oeuvre and Victorian fiction will be challenged and complicated. Much attention will be paid to character construction, narrative method, the social and political concerns of the novels, the evocation of scene and the rhetoric of sentiment. In particular, an appreciation of the overt fictitiousness of Dickens's narrative mode will inform the enquiry into his methods of composition and help to elucidate the author's subsequent mixed reception.
These will include: an understanding of the literary, cultural and socio-political contexts out of which Dickens's novels emerged and to which they contributed; an exploration of the value systems underlying the texts; an awareness of the range and diversity of Dickens's writings, of his importance as a literary innovator and of some of the central concerns and issues that recur in his novels; the examination of selected works by means of close textual analysis and by engagement with various critical perspectives.
1 x 2 hour seminar per week, plus one-to-one discussion in consultation hours where desired.
