Charles Dickens: Novels and Biography

Course Description

Summary

Dickens’ novels are works of approachable genius, transmitted through their comedy, pulsing energy and relentless life. They also reflect fictional shapings of Dickens’ life, obsessions in the man that regularly recur in the art. We will be reading a biography of Dickens, three of his major novels, including the two most autobiographical, David Copperfield and Great Expectations, and some pertinent criticism. The classroom conversation will be a mixture of narrative patterns noted, themes observed and traced, meanings analyzed and proposed, with close reading and regular student participation essential.