To Understand Such Wretchedness: Dickens And Public Health.

PhDLiteratureModern literatureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/180817/2/7726311.pd

Dickens and the American Millennium: The Uniformitarian Argument of Martin Chuzzlewit

This essay builds on recent critical discussion of Dickens’s novels in terms of the ‘uniformitarian’ and ‘catastrophist’ paradigms of time and change, then current in contemporary geological discourse. While previous scholarship has mainly focused on these ideas as they are represented in Dickens’s later novels, this essay examines an earlier text, Martin Chuzzlewit, the only Dickens novel to reference Lyell’s Elements of Geology by name and, (through its American subplot), the only novel to explore fundamentally contrasting paradigms of origins, history, and nationhood. The providential plot of Martin Chuzzlewit, its deus ex machina conclusion, and continent-spanning coincidences would seem to describe a ‘catastrophist’ narrative structure, one characterized by interventions that interrupt the status quo and suddenly alter history. But Dickens also shows how catastrophic events are often contained within a more expansive uniformitarian time frame. He depicts human beings as small and vulnerable against ancient earthscapes of ocean, plain, forest, and wilderness, and exposes as myopic the narcissism of the vaunting, needy ego, with its self-centered construction of the world. Dickens makes these ideas part of a nationalist argument in deconstructing the American historical narrative. Americans found the closest analogue for their democratic experiment in the favourite example of the catastrophists—the Biblical deluge. Like the flood, the American Revolution had supposedly washed away the sins and traces of the past, permitting a momentous new start. But Dickens proposed a counter-narrative of the ‘New’ World evoking its still-visible primeval landscape and its disappearing ‘savage’ races. Against the American view of democracy as a recent, decisive intervention in human history permanently altering its trajectory, Dickens urged the unknowability of origins, the fragility of the human race and the certainty of change

Dickens in the New Millennium

This special issue of the Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens initially published in 2012 means to celebrate Charles Dickens’s bicentenary of his birthday and offers a selection of articles derived from the yearly conference of the Dickens Society which took place in Aix-en-Provence. The aim of this volume is to consider how Dickens’s fiction is understood, interpreted and taught nowadays, and whether it answers twenty-first-century concerns. The essays collected here also examine how today’s public views the mid-Victorian period through Dickens’s writing. The editors would like to thank all the authors for their contributions to the present volume as well as the research centres which made this publication possible : the LERMA (Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone – Université d’Aix-Marseille 1), EMMA (Études Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone – Université de Montpellier 3), CECILLE (Centre d’Études en Civilisations, Langues et Littératures Étrangères – Université Charles de Gaulle Lille 3), the PULM (Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée), the Dickens Society and the Dickens Museum for their kind permission to use Robert William Buss’s ‘Dickens’s Dream’. The volume consists of six sections. ‘Making a Start on Dickens’ contains three essays focusing on teaching Dickens or stressing the relevance of Dickens’s work in the information age. ‘Iconic and Cinematic Dickens’ is about the visual potentialities of Dickens’s work in book illustrations or cinematic adaptations. ‘Reading Dickens’ reviews the value of reading itself in the Victorian author’s fiction as well as his recourse to sentimentality or to a double narrating stance. The articles in ‘Scientific Dickens’ show the contribution that science and the history of science still bring to the interpretation of his work today. ‘Hypo/Hyper Dickens’ explores another contribution to his legacy in the form of Dickensian doubles, either in his own fiction or as post-Dickens neo-Victorian rewritings. Finally ‘Metafictional, Prototypical and Archetypal Dickens’ studies a selection of metanarratives (mythological, apocalyptic, geological), which Dickens used to decipher the signs of his times. Ce numéro hors série des Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens entend célébrer le bicentenaire de la naissance de Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Il réunit une sélection d’articles dérivés du Congrès de la Dickens Society qui s’est tenu à Aix-en-Provence en 2012. Le but de cette publication est d’évaluer la façon dont la fiction de Dickens est comprise, interprétée et enseignée aujourd’hui, et de voir si cette fiction répond aux préoccupations du XXIe siècle. Les articles regroupés ici examinent également la manière dont le public d’aujourd’hui considère la période victorienne à travers les écrits de Charles Dickens. Les rédacteurs en chef remercient les auteurs des contributions de ce volume ainsi que les centres de recherche qui en ont permis la publication : le LERMA (Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone – Université d’Aix-Marseille 1), EMMA (Études Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone – Université de Montpellier 3), CECILLE (Centre d’Études en Civilisations, Langues et Littératures Étrangères – Université Charles de Gaulle Lille 3), les PULM (Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée), la Dickens Society et le Dickens Museum pour leur autorisation de faire usage du tableau de Robert William Buss, ‘Dickens’s Dream’, comme couverture. Le volume se compose de six sections. ‘Making a Start on Dickens’ regroupe trois articles qui se concentrent sur l’enseignement des oeuvres de Dickens dans un contexte secondaire ou universitaire ou sur leur pertinence dans le monde numérique et connecté d’aujourd’hui. ‘Iconic and Cinematic Dickens’ se concentre sur les potentialités visuelles de ses œuvres par le biais des illustrations publiées dans des éditions posthumes ou des adaptations cinématographiques. ‘Reading Dickens’ considère la valeur qu’attribuait l’auteur victorien à la lecture au travers de ses fictions, son recours au sentimentalisme ou à une double instance narrative. Les articles de la section intitulée ‘Scientific Dickens’ montre la contribution que la science et l’histoire de la science continuent d’apporter à l’interprétation de ses oeuvres aujourdhui. ‘Hypo/Hyper Dickens’ explore une autre contribution à son patrimoine sous la forme des doubles dickensiens, soit au sein de ses œuvres, soit dans le domaine des réécritures néo-victoriennes. Enfin, ‘Metafictional, Prototypical and Archetypal Dickens’ aborde un ensemble de méta-récits (mythologique, apocalyptique, géologique), auxquels Dickens a eu recours pour déchiffrer les signes de son temps