Dickens's Mudfog

Abstract:

This article has three intentions. It starts with the name "Mudfog" as this appears in Dickens, and as the combination of mud and fog – why these? – runs throughout Dickens's prose and his settings, and his interests. It gives particular attention here to Bleak House and Little Dorrit and Great Expectations. Second, it is interested in thinking of mud and fog not as "symbols," but as modes of thinking (definable as allegorical), and here it pursues Dickens's reading of Shakespeare by looking at the uses of mud and fog as they accumulate from Shakespeare's plays. It attempts to read Dickens not as merely drawing on Shakespeare but as enabling a reading of Shakespeare in turn – here discussion of Hamlet becomes crucial for a reading of Bleak House.