Dickens: The Novel and Society

This course rehabilitates Charles Dickens from his reputation as a mainstream writer paid by the word, most famous as the author of sentimental, implausible works for children, such as A Christmas Carol. We will be looking at Dickens’s social novels as a formally innovative response to the urban and industrial capitalism of his time. Issues will include: realism, the relation of his fiction to his journalism, serial form, and representations of work, the city, and bureaucracy.