Dickens S Secular Gospel

The first full-length study on the subject of Dickens and work, this book reshapes our understanding of Dickens by challenging a critical oversimplification: that Dickens's attitude towards work reflects conventional expressions of Victorian earnestness of the sort attributed also to Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and even more simplistically, Samuel Smiles. Instead, by analyzing a wide range of Dickens’s fiction and journalism in the light of new biographical and historical research, Louttit shows that Dickens is not interested in work as an abstract, positive value, or even in cataloguing it in concrete detail. What he explores instead is the human dimension of work: how, in other words, work affects the lives of those engaged in it. His writing about work is, as a result, best viewed not merely as a quasi-religious Gospel of Work, nor as an objective sociological report, but rather as what Louttit terms a "secular gospel."

The first full-length study on the subject of Dickens and work, this book argues that, rather than engaging with work as an abstract, quasi-religious and entirely benign value, Dickens’s writings demonstrate the varied ways in which it shapes gender identity and personality.

The Life of our Lord is a life of Jesus written by Dickens for his children in the 1840s but not published intil 1934. This is the first major study to carefully and seriously consider the work and its place in the Dickens corpus.

The importance of understanding Dickens's religion to obtain a full appreciation of his achievement has long been admitted; but this is the first critical study of the interaction between Dickens's religious beliefs and his creative imagination throughout his career. The novelist's religious beliefs are a pervasive and deeply felt presence in his works even if they are not always clearly thought out or expressed. Too discreet and humane to be as explicit, or as dull, as most of the professedly religious novelists of his time, Dickens nevertheless suggests in his own way a liberal Protestant belief, shot through with Romantic, transcendental yearnings, which undoubtedly appealed to a very wide range of readers. Dickens's religion is shown to be that of a great popular writer, who created a unique kind of fiction, and a unique relationship with his readers, by the absorption and transformation of less respectable contemporary forms, from fairy-tale and German romance to tract and print. Walder's thoroughly researched and lively book provides students of Dickens and the Victorian period with an original perspective on the novelist's methods and attitudes. He offers a judicious and informed exploration of Dickens's obsessive themes, from the 'fall' of innocence in Pickwick Papers, to the search for a religious 'answer' in Little Dorrit. Each chapter focuses upon the striking congruences revealed between individual novels, or groups of novels, and particular religious themes. The views expressed in Dickens's lesser fiction and non-fiction are drawn on throughout, as are those in the influential contemporary press.

Explores the Christian convictions Charles Dickens held and displayed in his work, bringing the vital faith of an important and vastly popular writer to life.

"The most stirring Dickens scenes and characters in one concise volume"--

This charming, nostalgic work includes illustrations of pages from the original manuscript, a portrait of Dicken's children, and engravings of biblical scenes in a style often used in family Bibles during Dicken's time.

"This book is a Christian devotional that uses A Christmas Carol as a tool to teach the ancient Advent lessons of Hope, Faith, Peace, Love and Joy. Each week's devotion begins with a section from A Christmas Carol which dramatizes the Advent Lesson and is followed with a scriptural Advent lesson from the Church of England s Book of Prayer. As we travel through Ebenezer's redemptive healing journey, readers are invited to examine how Christ is born in their past, present and future. This devotional is for Christians to use as private and family devotions to prepare themselves for the Advent season"--P. [4] of cover.