This is an exploration of the streets of Dickens's London which opens up new perspectives on the city and the writer. Taking Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project as an inspiration, Dickens's London offers an exciting and original project that opens a dialogue between phenomenology, philosophy and the Dickensian representation of the city in all its forms. Julian Wolfreys suggests that in their representations of London - its streets, buildings, public institutions, domestic residences, rooms and phenomena that constitute such space - Dickens's novels and journalism can be seen as forerunners of urban and material phenomenology. While also addressing those aspects of the urban that are developed from Dickens's interpretations of other literary forms, styles and genres, Dickens's London presents in 26 episodes (from Banking and Breakfast via the Insolvent Court, Melancholy and Poverty, to Todgers and Time, Voice and Waking) a radical reorientation to London in the nineteenth century, the development of Dickens as a writer, and the ways in which readers today receive and perceive both. It is a major reassessment of Dickens's writing on the city. It provides dual focus on methodology and the historicity of Dickensian urban consciousness. It provides philosophical reflections on urban tropologies through key passages from Dickens's texts recreate the experience of Victorian London. It's inventive structure offers the reader an experience of the disordered multiplicity of London. It is illustrated with 19 maps and photographs.
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Taking Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project as an inspiration, this book offers a project that opens a dialogue between phenomenology, philosophy and the Dickensian representation of the city in all its forms. It provides dual focus on methodology and the historicity of Dickensian urban consciousness.
Read more

Product details

ISBN
9781474402385
Published
2015-04-30
Publisher
Vendor
Edinburgh University Press
Height
234 mm
Width
156 mm
Age
G, 01
Language
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Number of pages
272

Biographical note

Julian Wolfreys is Professor of English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, where he is also Director of the Centre for Studies in Literature.