Dickens's villains : melodrama, character, popular culture
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Dickens's villains : melodrama, character, popular culture
Oxford University Press, 2001
- : hbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [238]-252) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This is the first major study of Dickens's villains. They embody, John argues, the crucial fusion between the 'deviant' and 'theatrical' aspects of his writing. Though there have been many studies of both the macabre and the dramatic Dickens, this book sets up a dialogue between these two main strands. John's wider reappraisal of Dickensian character stems from a belief that post-Romantic criticism and theory has been permeated by an anti-theatrical privileging of
the mind. Dickens's characters, by contrast, are commonly modelled on passional prototypes from nineteenth-century melodrama. Her interdisciplinary study locates the rationale for Dickens's melodramatic characters in his political commitment to the principle of cultural inclusivity and his related
resistance to 'psychology'. Melodramatic villains function as the key site of Dickens's responses to theatricality, psychology, and cultural inclusiveness. Dickens's Villains suggests a new way of understanding the cultural and political implications of his melodramatic aesthetics.
Table of Contents
- I: MELODRAMA, VILLAINY, ACTING
- II: DICKENS'S NOVELS
by "Nielsen BookData"
