Gender And Madness In The Novels Of Charles Dickens

A Companion to Charles Dickens concentrates on the historical, ideological, and social forces that defined Dickens’s world. Puts Dickens’s work into its literary, historical, and social contexts Traces the development of Dickens’s career as a journalist and novelist Includes original essays by leading Dickensian scholars on each of Dickens’s fifteen novels Explores a broad range of topics, including criticisms of his novels, the use of history and law in his fiction, language, and the effect of political and social reform Examines Dickens's legacy and surveys the mass of secondary materials that has been generated in response and reverence to his writing

The Reception of Charles Dickens in Europe offers a full historical survey of Dickens's reception in all the major European countries and many of the smaller ones, filling a major gap in Dickens scholarship, which has by and large neglected Dickens's fortunes in Europe, and his impact on major European authors and movements. Essays by leading international critics and translators give full attention to cultural changes and fashions, such as the decline of Dickens's fortunes at the end of the nineteenth century in the period of Naturalism and Aestheticism, and the subsequent upswing in the period of Modernism, in part as a consequence of the rise of film in the era of Chaplin and Eisenstein. It will also offer accounts of Dickens's reception in periods of political upheaval and revolution such as during the communist era in Eastern Europe or under fascism in Germany and Italy in particular.

The years 1676 and 1774 marked two turning points in the social and legal treatment of madness in England. In 1676, London’s Bethlehem Hospital expanded in grand new premises, and in 1774 the Madhouses Act attempted to limit confinement of the insane. This study explores almost a century of the English history of madness through the texts of five poets who were considered mentally troubled according to contemporary standards: James Carkesse, Anne Finch, William Collins, Christopher Smart and William Cowper were hospitalized, sequestered or exiled from society. Their works cope with representations of insanity, medical definitions or practices, imputed illness, and the judging eye of the ‘sane other’, shedding new light on the dis/continuities in the notion of madness of this period.

According to Laurie Langbauer, the notion of romance is vague precisely because it represents the chaotic negative space outside the novel that determines its form. Addressing questions of form, Langbauer reads novels that explore the interplay between the novel and romance: works by Charlotte Lennox, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and George Meredith. She considers key issues in feminist debate, in particular the relations of feminist to the poststructuralist theories of Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault. In highlighting questions of gender in this way, Women and Romance contributes to a major debate between skeptical and materialist points of view among poststructuralist critics.

From Jack the Ripper to Frankenstein, Halloween customs to Alexander McQueen collections, Fashioning Horror examines how terror is fashioned visually, symbolically, and materially through fashion and costume, in literature, film, and real life. With a series of case studies that range from sensationalist cinema and Slasher films to true crime and nineteenth-century literature, the volume investigates the central importance of clothing to the horror genre, and broadens our understanding of both material and popular culture. Arguing that dress is fundamental to our understanding of character and setting within horror, the chapters also reveal how the grotesque and horrific is at the center of fashion itself, with its potential for instability, disguise, and carnivalesque subversion. Packed with original research, and bringing together a range of international scholars, the book is the first to thoroughly examine the aesthetics of terror and the role of fashion in the construction of horror.

This collection of essays is devoted to last letters : letters sent – or not – to sever a relationship, to mark the end of a phase in one’s life, or letters written by people about to be executed or commit suicide just before their deaths. Conversely, some of the letters analysed are fictional, and still other forms of texts, such as poems, are considered ultimate messages by the authors of the articles. By focussing on various forms of last letters, the contributors aim to define the influence of the epistolary context on endings and to provide an original approach to closure.

The aim of the book is twofold: first, to provide an overview of the critical history of eccentricity; and secondly to conceptualise a notion that is often presented as a defining feature of the English “character”. It addresses the key issues raised by eccentricity and brings out interdisciplinary links between science, politics, literature and the arts: the sources and dissemination of the concept of eccentricity; its relationship with the English national character as historical and ideological constructs; the structural need for variation and divergence within accepted social norms; the paradoxical status of the eccentric as outsider – when eccentricity is transgressive and alienating – and as insider – eccentricity as socially acceptable deviation. Fundamentally eccentricity is a normative notion: being ex-centred enables eccentrics to delineate and negotiate boundaries between the margins and the centre, the canon and the norm. The contributors question the links between eccentricity, diversity and originality; the value of individual experience and character; and as a corollary, the struggle to retain individuality against increasing standardization, commoditisation and channelling within the normative discourse of normality. Eccentricity as display and performance is also tackled in several chapters, which focus on reception, image and (self)-representation, exhibition and voyeurism.