DICKENS QUARTERLY最新文献

{"title":"The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature by Renée Fox (review)","authors":"Leslie S. Simon","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2024.a920209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2024.a920209","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature</em> by Renée Fox <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Leslie S. Simon (bio) </li> </ul> Renée Fox. <em>The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature</em>. Ohio State UP, 2023. Pp. x + 267. $69.95. ISBN 978-0-8142-1549-4 (hb). <p><strong>T</strong>ucked into a long and deeply satisfying chapter on Dickensian realisms, in her incisive new study of the nineteenth-century historical imagination, <em>The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature</em>, Renée Fox utters two almost throwaway statements that caught my attention. In the first, writing of Pip in <em>Great Expectations</em> (1860–61), Fox tells us in a parenthetical aside: “I won’t deny him his moral redemption – he’s clearly less of an asshole in his middle age than he is in his youth” (94). Later in the chapter, analyzing zombie-like figures in <em>Our Mutual Friend</em> (1864–65) like Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren, Fox writes with feeling, “And god help those poor characters, all they want is to be allowed to be dead” (106). In the one instance, I shattered the quiet of my office with laughter; in the other, tears sprang unbidden to my eyes. In both, I felt a visceral engagement with the analysis, as Fox raised the specters of Dickens’s characters in full and fleshy form – “alive again bodies,” as she would say (8) – and bid me look at them anew.</p> <p>These two comments themselves have little bearing on the overall argument of the chapter, which posits a logistically complex interpretation of “epitaphic” and “zombie” realisms in the novels, but – to my mind – they model the kind of reading <em>The Necromantics</em> explicitly calls for, what Fox terms “resuscitative reading.” This method takes its cue from history as a discipline, which she says “exhumes, renews, resuscitates; … disintegrates distinctions between past and present; … brings back the dead as people” (15). Indeed, Fox imagines historians – and literary readers, by extension – less as time-travelers than as resurrectionists: rather than imagining ourselves backward into the past through acts of reading, we “resurrect the dead in the present moment,” thereby “giving the dead [like Pip and Jenny Wren] a second life in the present” and “making the past matter <em>now</em>” (15).</p> <p>Her approach draws heavily upon recent studies in presentism, including Rita Felski’s work on “postcritical reading,” which underscores the “dynamic interaction between reader and text” (11); Fox charts this relation upon a timeline – text/past, reader/present – and urges us to understand our reading as an historical act, one that pulls the past into the present (not <em>vice</em> <strong>[En","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"175 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139953833","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":"Full Havisham Effect","authors":"Mary Mullen","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2024.a920203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2024.a920203","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Reflecting on Miss Havisham, one of the most famous ghosts in the marriage plot, this personal essay considers the importance of having space to grieve. While living as a lodger in my colleague’s home after ending my marriage, I dreamed of Miss Havisham’s Satis House: a space of my own where I could decay alongside the scraps, fragments, and stuff that makes a life. But when I moved into my apartment, I identified more with Catherine Dickens who mourned her mistreatment by Charles but moved on all the same. Ultimately, this essay celebrates the love that appears minor in the marriage plot but is major during separation.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139953943","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 and Travel: The Start of Modern Travel Writing by Lucinda Hawksley (review)","authors":"Nathalie Vanfasse","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2024.a920210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2024.a920210","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Dickens and Travel: The Start of Modern Travel Writing&lt;/em&gt; by Lucinda Hawksley &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Nathalie Vanfasse (bio) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;Lucinda Hawksley&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Dickens and Travel: The Start of Modern Travel Writing&lt;/em&gt;. Pen and Sword History, 2022. Pp. 270. £22.00. ISBN 978-1-52673-563-8 (hb). &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;D&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;ickens and Travel: the Start of Modern Travel Writing&lt;/em&gt; was written by Lucinda Hawksley, descendant from Henry Fielding Dickens, Dickens’s eighth child. The monograph focuses on Dickens as a traveler and on the numerous peregrinations he undertook during his life. It chimes with other monographs touching upon Dickens and travel published in recent years such as Jonathan Grossman’s &lt;em&gt;Dickens’s Networks: Public Transport and the Novel&lt;/em&gt; (2013); Ruth Livesey’s &lt;em&gt;Writing the Stagecoach Nation&lt;/em&gt; (2016), and the present author’s &lt;em&gt;La Plume et la route, Dickens écrivainvoyageur&lt;/em&gt; (2017). These in turn resonated with work conducted on &lt;em&gt;Dickens on France&lt;/em&gt; (2007) by John Edmonson, and &lt;em&gt;Dickens in Italy&lt;/em&gt; (2009) by Michael Hollington and Francesca Orestano. &lt;em&gt;Dickens and Travel&lt;/em&gt; plunges readers into the different trips Dickens made during his career. It also considers how these journeys influenced his fiction. Lucinda Hawksley provides readers with a wealth of details and anecdotes that recreate the spirit and atmosphere of these visits. The book brings together Dickens’s personal life, his writing – and particularly his fiction – in relation to the various trips and stays Dickens made. It retraces his journeys in the British Isles and abroad, as he travelled there alone, or with his wife, family and/or with friends.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The book follows Dickens’s life and career. It tackles for instance Dickens’s first journeys as a journalist or as a newlywed, and his journey of investigation with Phiz for his novel &lt;em&gt;Nicholas Nickleby&lt;/em&gt;. It touches upon Dickens’s taste for watering places, as well as his visits to Scotland, Wales and Ireland. In addition to that, a few sections of the book are devoted to Dickens’s tour of North America. Dickens’s journey to Italy also occupies pride of place in the monograph. Another chapter covers Switzerland. Two chapters consider Dickens’s Francophilia and his passion for Paris and Boulogne. Hawksley also alludes to Dickens and Wilkie Collins’s &lt;em&gt;Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices&lt;/em&gt;, as well as Dickens’s &lt;em&gt;Uncommercial Traveller&lt;/em&gt;. The last few chapters are devoted to the railways, to Dickens’s return to America, and to Dickens’s ideas of Australia.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The book begins with an allusion to stagecoaches which Hawksley relates to Dickens’s childhood memories as well as to the setting of Dickens’s career in motion (2). An amusing anecdote about a fleet of stagecoaches whose sides were emblaz","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"143 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139953945","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":"Dickensian Dimensions: A Transatlantic Dialogue","authors":"Rosemarie Bodenheimer, Philip Davis","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2024.a920200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2024.a920200","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>“Dickensian Dimensions” makes use of Dickens’s manuscript revisions to uncover the extra dimensions of emotional depth and temporal complexity that his sentences acquire in the immediate midst of composition. When the effects of those little changes were offered to a group of serious ordinary readers in the UK, their responses to selected passages from <i>David Copperfield</i> showed how much the tiny revisions could matter emotionally. The second part of the essay considers revised passages from Dickens’s next first-person narrator, Esther Summerson of <i>Bleak House</i>. We suggest that Esther’s apparently coy evasions can be more sympathetically read as writing problems stemming from her existential situation as a virtual non-person.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139953836","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":"The Family Novel in Russia and England, 1800–1880 by Anna A. Berman (review)","authors":"Renata Goroshkova","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2023.a913290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2023.a913290","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Family Novel in Russia and England, 1800–1880&lt;/em&gt; by Anna A. Berman &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Renata Goroshkova (bio) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Anna A. Berman. &lt;em&gt;The Family Novel in Russia and England, 1800–1880&lt;/em&gt;. Oxford UP, 2023. Pp. x + 272. $101.99. ISBN 978-0-19-286662-2 (hb). &lt;p&gt;Berman explains the relevance and importance of this book by the fact that she is fighting against the \"aesthetic racism\" that, in the words of Elaine Freedgood, \"has placed the British and French nineteenth-century novel at the masterful, still center of […] novel history\" (qtd. 5), and confronting the unfairness of forgetting dominant literary figures. For, \"one could hardly claim that Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev were &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; important contributors to the nineteenth-century novel tradition\" (5). The book was written, obviously, before the recent events began, but being released in the middle of speculations about the cancelling of Russian culture, and on the background of rumors about the exclusion of Dostoevsky's novels from the curricula of American Universities, it becomes a heartening ray of sanity, revealing a unique perspective on how literature of both the British and the Russian empires digested and problematized social questions of their time, developing defensive mechanisms against toxic ideology and deleterious beliefs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Berman studies novels in the context of family history through the lens of different aspects of life, from laws related to family matters to the changing role of women in society, making a parallel between the family and the State: \"Viewed in this context, the depictions of family in the novels take on greater social and political weight. The pervasiveness of the theme of tyrannical fathers and patriarchal oppression could be understood as the closest authors could come to critiquing the autocracy\" (13–14). The society that is formed under a certain type of state government directly affects the ways in which families are created in this society, which, according to Berman, is overtly manifested in the structure of novels: \"family structure is indeed a crucial determinant of the plotlines each nation embraced\" (88). By understanding another and seeing the world from their perspective, we can learn more about ourselves, therefore, and the comparative aspect can be considered the main advantage of the book. Berman masterfully and convincingly compares the English and the Russian family structure that forms the novel space – \"the English had a linear model of family that focused on genealogy, origins, and descent, while the Russians were much more interested in &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the family in the here and now\" (2) – and draws far-reaching conclusions: \"The English focus on futurity versus the Russian emphasis on the present can be explained by a more fundamental distinction bet","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"76 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138519510","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":"The Dickens Society Prizes","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2023.a913293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2023.a913293","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> The Dickens Society Prizes <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <h2>The David Paroissien Prize</h2> <p>The <strong>David Paroissien Prize</strong> is awarded each year to the best peer-reviewed essay on Dickens published in a journal or edited collection. The Prize is named for David Paroissien, a founding member of the Dickens Society and also the founder of <em>Dickens Quarterly</em>, which he edited from its first issue in 1984 until his final issue in December 2019. As an editor he was rigorous, tactful, and generous, particularly with younger scholars. Under his direction, <em>Dickens Quarterly</em> attracted contributions from Dickens scholars around the world and became a leading venue for new work in the field.</p> <p>To nominate (or self-nominate) an essay for the Paroissien Prize, please provide a copy of the essay and a cover email giving the name, email address, and institutional affiliation (if any) of its author. For the 2023 competition (essays published 1 January 2023 – 31 December 2023), send these materials to the Society Secretary at <strong>dickenssocietysecretary@gmail.com</strong> by 31 January 2024. A three-person committee comprised of Officers and/or Trustees will judge submissions. Please note that, in determining an essay's eligibility for a given year, the actual date of appearance is what matters, not the nominal date of the journal issue, since it is common for journals to lag behind their publication date. Any author may be nominated for this Prize, whether or not they are a Society member. The Prize carries a cash award of $500 and waives the registration fee for the Symposium at which the recipient will be recognized.</p> <h2>The Partlow Prize</h2> <p>The <strong>Partlow Prize</strong> may be in the form of either one stipend of $500 or two of $300 (if two recipients are chosen), and is intended to defray costs of attending the Dickens Symposium, in order to deliver a paper on any aspect of Dickens's life or work. The registration fee and cost of the Dickens Dinner will also be waived. Eligibility is restricted to students (graduate or undergraduate), independent scholars, and non-tenured faculty. Candidates should submit a CV and a completed paper of 20 minutes' duration, to the organizer by the requested date. Should the paper be of publishable quality, <em>Dickens Quarterly</em> shall have first right of refusal. <strong>[End Page 519]</strong></p> Copyright © 2023 Dickens Society ... </p>","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"50 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138519551","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":"The Ways of the Word: Episodes in Verbal Attention by Garrett Stewart (review)","authors":"Tamsin Evernden","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2023.a913288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2023.a913288","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Ways of the Word: Episodes in Verbal Attention&lt;/em&gt; by Garrett Stewart &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Tamsin Evernden (bio) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Garrett Stewart. &lt;em&gt;The Ways of the Word: Episodes in Verbal Attention&lt;/em&gt;. Cornell UP, 2021. Pp. i + 239. $24.95. ISBN 978-1-5017-6140-9 (pb). &lt;p&gt;Garrett Stewart's eighteenth book has a doubly self-reflexive thesis. Building upon previous work on \"the linguistic infrastructure of […] textured prose\" (from the blurb of Stewart's 2018 monograph, &lt;em&gt;The One, Other, and Only Dickens&lt;/em&gt;), &lt;em&gt;The Ways of the Word&lt;/em&gt; sets out to explore \"simply letting verbal texture have its say\" through a series of \"readings &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt;, rather than readings &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt;, fiction\" (19). The switch of preposition presages the book's focus upon the dividends of illogic. It also forewarns the reader of an echo chamber of analyses, so far-reaching in individual measure that the flow of argument is sometimes lost. However, in this Stewart exactly replicates his point, and fulfils it. \"The Ways of the Word\" are centrifugal in his eyes, to his ears, carrying sense through divergent tracks of etymology, phonetics, and ambiguity &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;. The business of reading represents not so much a continuum as a series of pockets, each with expansive potential.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Stewart's book incentivizes the kind of competitive critique wherein metaphor outdoes metaphor. His consideration of how \"words work overtime in literary prose\" includes the implicit (industry), artisanship (\"its woven way\"), and living organism (\"&lt;em&gt;weigh&lt;/em&gt; those words […] take their pulse\") (3; 19; 58). Inveterate word and, by extension, image play infiltrates practical criticism from Empson and Leavis to Kermode. (Stewart does not deviate &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 490]&lt;/strong&gt; from the Western canon, although he does give thought to writing outside a native language). This idiom represents a true pleasure in wording, capturing the heft or inflection or mood of writing, its tonal climate. However, there's a balance to be struck. To shed an appreciative light upon a primary text is to widen the sphere of understanding, whereas to pull away into intellectual pyrotechnics is grandstanding. Stewart implies that appreciation is lost in (and on) the modern academy, \"whose mainstream weathervanes are tooled for other disciplinary crosscurrents than wording's high- or low-pressure fronts\" (4). The likely reality is that only appreciation as actively incisive as it is awed and in abeyance can stand in the stead of schools of criticism that are institutionally validated.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Although he cites him many times, Stewart does not abide by George Orwell's edict of plain writing. He articulates his points in long, multifarious sentences; facets of argument and apposite words dually collaborate. This creates richness or tautology, depend","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"218 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138519508","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, Death, and Christmas by Robert L. Patten (review)","authors":"Natalie J. McKnight","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2023.a913287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2023.a913287","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Dickens, Death, and Christmas&lt;/em&gt; by Robert L. Patten &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Natalie J. McKnight (bio) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Robert L. Patten. &lt;em&gt;Dickens, Death, and Christmas&lt;/em&gt;. Oxford UP, 2023. Pp. xx + 344. $130.00. ISBN 978-0-19-286266-2 (hb). &lt;p&gt;In this beautifully illustrated, richly contextualized study, Robert Patten traces the often surprising and deeply-rooted connections between death and Christmas festivities in Dickens's Christmas books and in his own experiences of the winter solstice holidays. Patten begins with a vivid description of the Paris morgue and its theatrical display of corpses, a site Dickens frequently visited, often around the winter holidays. It's a striking Prologue with its gruesome details of dead bodies on display, sometimes as if in conversation with each other, and it effectively establishes the key intertwining themes of the book: death and rebirth, remembering and forgetting, ghoulishness and festivity. It also highlights that Patten is writing not just for scholars but for a broader audience of Dickens enthusiasts. The lively writing of the Prologue, which immerses the reader in the sensory details of the scene in a manner few scholarly works ever do, continues throughout the book, and makes &lt;em&gt;Dickens, Death, and Christmas&lt;/em&gt; not only extremely informative but also a pleasure to read.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Patten divides the book into 12 chapters, one on each of Dickens's five Christmas books, plus ones on Dickens's visits to the morgue, his early experiences with Christmas, Yuletide as seen in &lt;em&gt;The Pickwick Papers&lt;/em&gt;, the social evils that motivated Dickens to strike \"sledge hammer blows\" in his holiday narratives, Christmas celebrations in the 1840s (including celebrations of his oldest son's birthday on Twelfth Night), the Christmas numbers Dickens penned and performed after the publication of the Christmas books, and finally a closing chapter on endings and their implications in life and fiction. In every chapter, Patten's vast knowledge of Dickens's life and works, the social fabric of the times, the extensive theatrical adaptations of his fiction, and the varied critical reception of his publications provide illuminating contexts that will probably surprise even seasoned Dickens scholars.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Of course, no one should be surprised by such erudition from such a renowned scholar. Still, having written on &lt;em&gt;A Christmas Carol&lt;/em&gt; myself, I foolishly thought there wouldn't be much new for me in the chapter devoted to that book. I of course was wrong. Patten's interpretation of the &lt;em&gt;Carol&lt;/em&gt; as an epillion, or small epic, provides a helpful framework for Scrooge's journey &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 488]&lt;/strong&gt; and \"makes the voices channeled in the fourth Stave [and elsewhere] more resonant\" (103). Patten's analyses of the illustrations – for the &lt;em&gt;Carol&lt;/","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138542479","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":"\"It was a strange figure\": The Fairies of A Christmas Carol","authors":"Joshua Dobbs","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2023.a913284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2023.a913284","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>With Marley's death emphatically declared in the opening pages of <i>A Christmas Carol</i>, his subsequent appearance clearly defines him as a Victorian ghost. However, the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and To Come conform to no such definition. Dickens never definitively reveals what they are, despite offering lengthy physical descriptions. There exists, as of yet, no thorough investigation into their identities. This article explores <i>A Christmas Carol</i> through a fairy lens because of the popularity of fairy folklore throughout the Victorian era, and Dickens's intimate knowledge of the subject. It identifies the probable fairy origins of the three spirits and demonstrates their connection to the very people that Scrooge initially pushes to the peripheries of his existence. The article also demonstrates that each specific type of fairy represented by the three Christmas spirits would have been known to Dickens.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"76 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138519501","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":"The Dickens Checklist","authors":"Dominic Rainsford","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2023.a913292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2023.a913292","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; The Dickens Checklist &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Dominic Rainsford &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Dickens Checklist, recording new publications, doctoral dissertations, and online resources of significance for Dickens studies, appears in each issue of the journal. A cumulative cross-referenced edition of the Checklist, consisting of listings since vol. 37, no. 1 (March 2020), is available at&lt;/em&gt; dickenssociety.org&lt;em&gt;, and is updated once a year&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; Dominic Rainsford Aarhus University &lt;h2&gt;Secondary Sources: Biography and Criticism&lt;/h2&gt; Aldridge, Mark. \"'I Read My Dickens': Agatha Christie's Unproduced Film Adaptation of &lt;em&gt;Bleak House&lt;/em&gt;.\" &lt;em&gt;Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 43, no. 2, 2023, pp. 400–18. &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; Bell, Emily. \"Wilkie Collins and Dickens.\" &lt;em&gt;Wilkie Collins in Context&lt;/em&gt;, edited by William Baker and Richard Nemesvari, Cambridge UP, 2023, pp. 184–89. &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; D'Alessandro, Michael. \"Dickens and Shakespeare and Longfellow, Oh My! Staging the Fan Canon at the Nineteenth-Century Authors' Carnivals.\" &lt;em&gt;American Literary History&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 35, no. 2, Summer 2023, pp. 715–43. &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;em&gt;Dickens Quarterly&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 40, no. 3, Sept. 2023. [Tamara S. Wagner, \"'Accidents will happen': Dickens's Comical Mishaps,\" pp. 277–300; Masayo Hasegawa: \"'Fact' versus 'Fancy' among Victorian Professionals in &lt;em&gt;Hard Times&lt;/em&gt;,\" pp. 301–20; Dana Pines, \"Charles Dickens &amp; Sir Philip Sidney: &lt;em&gt;Hard Times&lt;/em&gt;, An Equine Defence for the Novel,\" pp. 321–40; Jennifer Judge, \"The Juvenalian Satire of &lt;em&gt;Our Mutual Friend&lt;/em&gt;,\" pp. 341–61; William F. Long, \"Boz, New York and a Temperance Aphorism,\" pp. 362–75; Jeremy Tambling, review of &lt;em&gt;Dickens and Victorian Psychology: Introspection, First-Person Narration, and the Mind&lt;/em&gt;, by Tyson Stolte, pp. 376–81; Norbert Lennartz, review of &lt;em&gt;Goethe und Dickens als christliche Dichter&lt;/em&gt;, by Vittorio Hösle, pp. 381–84; James Eli Adams, review of &lt;em&gt;Queer Economic Dissonance and Victorian Literature&lt;/em&gt;, by Meg Dobbins, pp. 384–87; Iain Crawford, review of &lt;em&gt;The Afterlife of Enclosure: British Realism, Character, and the Commons&lt;/em&gt;, by Carolyn Lesjak, pp. 387–91; Robert L. Patten, review of &lt;em&gt;On Style in Victorian Fiction&lt;/em&gt;, edited by Daniel Tyler, pp. 391–95; Dominic Rainsford, \"The Dickens Checklist,\" pp. 404–06] &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/p&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Dickensian&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 119, part 1, no. 519, Spring 2023. [Joshua Clayton, \"Pip and Joe, Ever the Best of Friends,\" pp. 6–24; Masayo Hasegawa, \"Contrasting Uses of Rhetoric in &lt;em&gt;Hard Times&lt;/em&gt;,\" pp. 25–35; Michae","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":"219 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138519506","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}