Charles Dickens

In this paper our focus is on analyzing register variation within fiction, rather than between fiction and other registers. By working with subcorpora that separate text within and outside of quotation marks, we appromixate fictional speech and narration. This enables us to identify and compare linguistic features with regard to different situational contexts in the fictional world. We focus in particular on the novels of Charles Dickens and a reference corpus of other 19th-century fiction. Our main method for the register analysis is Multi-dimensional Analysis (MDA) for which we draw on altogether four dimensions from two previous MDAs. The linguistic distinctions we identify highlight similarities between fictional speech and involved registers such as face-to-face communication, and between narration and more informational and narrative prose. In addition to the detailed information on register features that characterize speech and narration, the paper raises more general questions about the ability of register studies to deal with situational contexts within fiction.

Abstract: The coding function of semiotic-systems in literature is explored as an example of Umberto Eco’s real and fictional protocols in the play of discourse formation (lector in fabula). The intricate phenomenological levels of intersemiotic translation (apposition, opposition, chiasm, zeugma) are illustrated by analyzing a rhetorical passage (semiotic object) from Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. The passage on the logic of series (“lists”) allows us to explore fact/fiction, real/ imaginary, normal/abnormal, sane/insane, neurotic/psychotic choices as dis- course voice protocols (active, middle, passive) for the axiological interpretation (ethic, moral, aesthetic, politic, and rhetoric) of meaning formation (tropes) and signification function (figures). Models of discourse are drawn from Benveniste, Foucault, Greimas, Lévi-Strauss, and Wilden.

Karantina deneyimi, tarihe gömüldüğüne herkesin çoktan ikna edildiği hikâyeleri şehir mekânında yeniden bir bir sahneye koyuyor. Gözünü hiper-gerçek bir dünya inşa etme hırsı bürümüş bir iktidar dünyanın devinimini bir fabrikanın çarkını durdurur gibi (Charlie Chaplin) durdururken, yankısı yıllar önce sokaklardan silinmiş sesler yeniden hayal meyal işitilmeye başlıyor. [...]
Uzaktan geçen fırıncının sesine kulak verirken bir yandan da zihnimde çalkantı ve devrimler çağı ondokuzuncu yüzyılın ünlü bir şehir romanının sayfaları rüzgârda hızla çevrildi. Kitlelerin zehir gibi bir hayata akıl almaz bir biçimde boyun eğdiği, onu sırtladığı yüzyılın en karanlık şehirlerinden Londra’nın kömür dumanı ve zift lekesine batmış mahallelerinde tıpkı bizdeki simitçiler gibi kapı kapı dolaşarak poğaça satan çocukların hikâyesi, kanalın karşısında Fransa’da, Paris’te tahıl kıtlığının halkı ekmekten yoksun bırakması, ekmek fiyatını yükselten fırıncıların halkın hışmına uğradığı ayaklanmalar, ve ekmek kıtlığını hafife alan kraliçenin bu sözlerini canıyla ödemesi, sanki yakın bir geçmiş gibi, karantina günlerinin bizi yakınlaştırdığı bir geçmiş gibi, siyah beyaz değil, canlı renklerle zihnimde aydınlandı.

Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop recounts the story of Nell, the imperfect woman-child, and her journey through nineteenth-century English landscapes to her final tragic death. The scholarship of Kayla Kreuger McKinney suggests that Dickens’s use of museum-like “exhibitionary spaces” point towards Nell’s final deathbed exhibition. This essay extends McKinney’s insights further, proposing that these moments would not be possible without Dickens’s well-timed and varied use of windows throughout the novel. It also contends that Dickens’s use of windows reinforces Nell’s “display-like” fragility, a crucial theme in The Old Curiosity Shop.

This article revisits the complex historical and methodological issues that surround the study of the Bildungsroman both within German literature and in a broader comparative context. It argues that the unusually narrow and well-defined circumstances of the Bildungsroman's rise in eighteenth-century Germany contributed to the persistence of a normative and often-essentialist understanding of this genre. The article further identifies the limitations of this understanding, which at once generates a fair amount of critical frustration and hinders the use of Bildungsroman as a comparative term. The article proposes an alternative understanding of the Bildungsroman as a genre capable of transcending the context in which it originated and of leaving behind the very notion of Bildung. The genre functions as something like German literature's disobedient child, one that we persistently attempt, and persistently fail, to discipline. This article suggests that we might wish to abandon this futile disciplinarian practice altogether.

O artigo visar propor um diálogo entre a obra de Dickens e as reflexões de Ricoeur e Freud sobre as representações da temporalidade humana e suas implicações para se pensar o sentido performativo do projeto constituinte de 1988 como processo de aprendizado social. Toma-se como ponto de análise seus personagens literários para se examinar as patologias da memória con-tidas na relação obsessiva com o passado. A conclusão é de conceber o uso crítico da memória como espaço de experiência e de lição, de responsabilidade e autocorreção como abertura do projeto constituinte, aqui e agora, às vozes recalcadas do passado. Palavras-chaves: Tempo. Memória. Constituição. ABSTRACT The article aims to propose a dialogue between the work of Dickens and the reflections of Ricoeur and Freud on the representations of human temporality and its implications to think the performative meaning of the 1988 constituent project as a process of social learning. It takes as its point of analysis its literary characters to examine the pathologies of memory

The idea of a child-centred Christmas is taken for granted now but in Dickens’ time it was not so assured. A high child mortality rate, child labour, poverty and, a colder, more utilitarian attitude towards children prevailed.  Dickens’ own childhood experiences were bad as he was set to work long hours in  Warren’s Blacking Factory while his father and family languished in a debtors prison. Dickens wanted to write a pamphlet about children but decided a dramatic story would be more effective. His book, A Christmas Carol, while sales were slow initially, went on to become hugely successful and influential, and has never been out of print since.

This volume analyzes the politics, culture and economics of the British hegemony from 1815 until 1860. Themes include textile-led industrialization, the Central and South American revolutions, British neocolonialism and industrial despotism, the 1830-1831 and 1848-1851 cycles of insurrection, the transformation of dynastic empires with mercantile characteristics and former colonies into empires of capital, the rise of the first plebian nationalisms and proletarian mass movements, and the key cultural innovations of the first phase of British-led globalization.

In the presentation, I propose some essential reflections on the research I have done during my three years as a PhD student, that has been adapted in a thesis entitled “Toy stories: comfort toys e modelli di comportamento nella children’s literature dal 1800 alla contemporaneità.”
The thesis consists of four chapters, but it can also be divided into two main parts.
The first part corresponds to the first chapter, where a brief introduction to the theme of toys is carried out through several methodological approaches. The second part corresponds to the following three chapters, which offers a literary analysis of a corpus consisting of eleven texts, where the theories investigated in the first chapter are immediately applied in order to identify the description and the role of the toys through three categories: the physical descriptions of the toys; their soul or their lack of it, and the way in which this feature conditions the relationship of toys with children inside and outside the text; and the symbolic value toys endorse when related to human society and culture.

This new version of Charles Dickens's classic tale has been carefully, lovingly, and respectfully created by the author and academic D. K. Fletcher to inspire young readers to immerse themselves in the spirit and imagination of England's greatest-ever writer.

A Christmas Carol has been revised for young readers a number of times before. But not like this. Previous revisions have shortened, omitted and simplified; and in doing so, have inadvertently removed much of the depth from Dickens’s original text. Fletcher’s new version, however, takes a different approach: it retains, digs and explores, to bring Dickens to the young in all his glory.

Fletcher stays true to Dickens’s voice, depth of meaning, and purpose, while making every line as accessible as possible. The result is a highly readable version of a timeless Christmas story, told in twelve easily-digestible Parts, in honour of the twelve days of Christmas.

Susanna Clarke’s novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell presents a mirrored imagery of 19th c. England that differs from its "original" counterpart by allowing the presence and functioning of magic. This transfictional, exomimetic world telling a history more plausible that the one commonly known, was termed - by K.M. Maj - allotopia (or, more precisely, its invariant, allohistory). A core world-building element in the novel is a juxtaposition of the "real" (19th c. London) and "fantastic" (represented by the Wonderland of the Faerie) world along with the references to a comedy of manners, gothic fiction, romantic ballads, or - more contemporaneously - Tolkien’s essay On Fairy-stories. Historical and cultural realities of that time and a narrative mirroring the style of Ch. Dickens or J. Austen, reflect the way one may imagine 19th c. England and, at the same time, distort this image. The analysis of the variety of such "mirrors" in the novel (structural, narrative, diegetic, linguistic, or tropic, as in case of the mirror depicted as a gateway to the worlds of Other Earths) follows a commentary on the evolution of genres linking the fantastic and the history - from alternative fiction to allohistories.
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Powieść Suzanny Clark "Jonathan Strange i pan Norrell" (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, 2004) proponując lustrzane wyobrażenie XIX-wiecznej Anglii - od "oryginału" różni się tym, że dopuszcza istnienie i funkcjonowanie magii. Ten transfikcjonalny, egzomimetyczny świat opowiadający historię bardziej prawdziwą niż ta ogólnie znana, nazwany został - za K.M. Majem - allotopią (a dokładniej jej odmianą, czyli allohistorią). Elementem konstrukcyjnym świata, stanowiącym dodatkowe (wobec "Anglii allotopijnej") zwielokrotnienie, jest wprowadzenie znanej z literatury opozycji świata "realistycznego" (Londyn w XIX wieku) i "fantastycznego" (reprezentowanego przez Krainę Czarów, Faerie), a wraz z nią - nawiązań do komedii obyczajowej, gotyckich opowieści czy romantycznych ballad, a bardziej współcześnie - do Tolkienowskiego eseju O baśniach. Realia historyczno-kulturowe tamtego czasu, opisane językiem stylizowanym na powieści Ch. Dickensa i J. Austen, odzwierciedlają wyobrażenia Anglii tego okresu, równocześnie je odkształcając. Analiza rozmaitych „luster” powieści (konstrukcyjnych, narracyjnych, fabularnych, językowych oraz motywu lustra jako bramy do świata Innych Ziem), poprzedzona została refleksją nad ewolucją gatunków łączących literaturę fantastyczną z historią - od fikcji alternatywnej do allohistorii.

Mathew Franklin Whittier, younger brother of the 19th-century Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier, is assessed in a thesis by his student biographer, Lloyd W. Griffin, as having published only one series concerning "Ethan Spike, of Hornby," plus a few other stories under the same signature. Daniel G Royot, who wrote a biographical sketch for "Encyclopedia of American Humorists, similarly credits him only with the "Ethan Spike" series. However, a 10-year study of primary sources revealed that M.F. Whittier, writing under dozens, if not hundreds of pseudonyms, had a prolific 50-year literary career beginning as a child prodigy at age 12. He wrote in many different genres, including humorous and serious poetry, adventure tales, essays, editorials, travelogues, parodies, reviews, journalistic reporting, and, of course, humorous sketches of various kinds. I have also identified 10 books which he either ghost-wrote, or published anonymously. However, because he would not publicly defend his work (probably because he was involved in secret abolitionist activities connected with the Underground Railroad), the best of it was often claimed for, or by, other authors. This paper presents an overview of the results of 10 years of intensive study into the deep historical record, using primary sources. The research was done in connection with a proposed case of reincarnation (the author as M.F. Whittier"s reincarnation); but the main contribution of past-life memory, in the form of intuition, was to point the researcher in the right direction. The scholastic evidence for each claimed attribution stands on its own objective merits. Statement to Skeptics The objective evidence for my conclusions is vast, complicated, and interwoven. I have not attempted to convince anyone in this paper-I am simply summarizing my results. These results can be properly assessed only by an open-minded immersion in the totality of the evidence as presented in my e-books, "Mathew Franklin Whittier in his own words," and its sequel, "Mathew Franklin Whittier in his own world." I would remind the reader that complete honesty and transparency-which I strove for in the writing of these two books-requires that I present all my conclusions, whether favorable, unfavorable, embarrassing or seemingly grandiose. There are certain elements of M.F. Whittier"s personal life which I would prefer, ideally, to pass over, like his drinking at certain stages of his life, and his decision to remarry, after losing his true-love to "consumption," on a practical basis. In addition, he probably hurt the feelings of many persons with his biting satire, when he could just as well have refrained from doing so. On the other hand, I am pleased to reveal the full power of his literary legacy, when it has been mistakenly claimed for, and even plagiarized by, other authors for so many decades. This is Mathew Franklin Whittier"s legacy uncensored-it now remains with you, the reader, not to censor it yourself, out of prejudice and long-time uncritical acceptance of 19th-century "fake news."

In criticism to date, the intertextual link between Esther Summerson and the biblical Queen Esther has been explained as one that invokes “womanly virtue”. By drawing on the meanings that had accumulated around the name “Esther” in the Victorian period, this article argues instead for Queen Esther’s significance in her identity as a sexual transgressor. Manifested in in the protagonist’s illegitimacy, sexual transgression makes Esther Summerson a quilting point for layers of biblical allusion to the fallen woman and judgment within Bleak House. Linked to John 8’s woman caught in adultery and the novel’s repeated invocation of apocalyptic judgment, attention to Queen Esther reveals the novel’s negotiation of different kinds of judgment to avert condemnation of the fallen woman whilst underlining the need for the denunciation of social ills.