"Bleak House": Charles Dickens

Description

It is in "Bleak House" that Dickens the realist and Dickens the modernist are often thought to meet. In the two intertwined but separate narratives, one from a woman's perspective and the other forming, arguably, the first detective novel in English, Dickens confronts modern England and modernity itself. The essays collected in this "New Casebook" embody some of the approaches to Dickens, using deconstructive, feminist, Marxist and post-structuralist methods. The introduction places the various essays in the context of current critical thinking, whilst itself suggesting an alternative viewpoint and the potential direction of future analysis of this text.

JEREMY TAMBLING teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong and, amongst other books, is author of Dickens, Violence and the Modern State (also published by Macmillan) and is editor of David Copperfield for Penguin Classics. He edited E.M.Forster in the New Casebook series.

'The strength of the whole volume is the editing. There are very useful and detailed end notes to each article. In addition, there is a clear synopsis of each of the eight chapters and reference to the writers or tradition which influences it. This enable the reader to dip and skip, skim and select in a way conducive to the student seeking understanding of a particular aspect of either Bleak House or literary theory. I would recommend this New Casebook as a precursor or warning of the kind of material awaiting the English Literature student at university, where literary theory shapes study.' - Carole Cox, The Use of English