Charles Dickens - Hard Times/Bleak House


Book Description

This stimulating study takes a fresh look at two of Dickens' most widely-studied texts. Part I uses carefully selected short extracts for close textual analysis, while Part II examines the historical and literary contexts and key criticism. The volume is an ideal introductory guide for those who are studying Dickens' novels for the first time.




Charles Dickens's Bleak House


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A Dictionary of Stylistics


Book Description

Reviews of the first edition: '...a work of high seriousness...manna from rhetorical heaven for students and researchers with a lot of hard graft ahead of them... '(English Today) '...an impressive single-author reference work... '(English) '...Not only is this volume indispensible for anyone, students or academics, working in any field related to stylistics, it is, like all the best dictionaries, a very good read...' (Le Lingue del Mondo) Over the past ten years there have been striking advances in stylistics. These have given rise to new terms and to revised thinking of concepts and re-definitions of terms. A Dictionary of Stylistics, 2nd Edition contains over 600 alphabeticlly listed entries: fully revised since the first and second editions, it contains many new entries. Drawing material from stylistics and a range of related disciplines such as sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics and traditional rhetoric, the revised Third Edition provides a valuable reference work for students and teachers of stylistics, as well as critical discourse analysis and literary criticism. At the same time it provides a general picture of the nature, insights and methodologies of stylistics. As well as explaining terminology clearly and concisely, this edition contains a subject index for further ease of use. With numerous quotations; explanations for many basic terms from grammar and rhetoric; and a comprehensive bibliography, this is a unique reference work and handbook for stylistic and textual analysis. Students and teachers at secondary and tertiary levels of English language and literature or English as a foreign or second language, and of linguistics, will find it an invaluable source of information. Katie Wales is Professor of Modern English Language, University of Leeds and Dean of Learning and Teaching in the Faculty of Arts.




Charles Dickens


Book Description

Charles Dickens is credited with creating some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian age. Even before reading the works of Dickens many people have met him already in some form or another. His characters have such vitality that they have leapt from his pages to enjoy flourishing lives of their own: The Artful Dodger, Miss Havisham, Scrooge, Fagin, Mr Micawber, and many many more. His portrait has been in our pockets, on our ten-pound notes; he is a national icon, indeed himself a generator of what Englishness signifies. In this book Jenny Hartley explores the key themes running through Dickens's corpus of works, and considers how they reflect his attitudes towards the harsh realities of nineteenth century society and its institutions, such as the workhouses and prisons. Running alonside this is Dickens's relish of the carnivalesque; if there is a prison in almost every novel, there is also a theatre. She considers Dickens's multiple lives and careers: as magazine editor for two thirds of his working life, as travel writer and journalist, and his work on behalf of social causes including ragged schools and fallen women. She also shows how his public readings enthralled the readers he wanted to reach but also helped to kill him. Finally, Hartley considers what we mean when we use the term 'Dickensian' today, and how Dickens's enduring legacy marks him out as as a novelist different in kind from others.




Bleak House


Book Description

Widely regarded as Dickens’s masterpiece, Bleak House centers on the generations-long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, through which “whole families have inherited legendary hatreds.” Focusing on Esther Summerson, a ward of John Jarndyce, the novel traces Esther’s romantic coming-of-age and, in classic Dickensian style, the gradual revelation of long-buried secrets, all set against the foggy backdrop of the Court of Chancery. Mixing romance, mystery, comedy, and satire, Bleak House limns the suffering caused by the intricate inefficiency of the law.




Nineteenth-century Literature Criticism


Book Description

Excerpts from criticism of the works of novelists, poets, playwrights, short story writers and other creative writers who lived between 1800 and 1900, from the first published critical appraisals to current evaluations.




The Essential Charles Dickens School Resource


Book Description

Charles Dickens is arguably the greatest storyteller in English Literature and his novels have been loved and respected for nearly two hundred years. As accurate reflections of Victorian society they are unparalleled. Vivid characters and realistic settings are created in the mind of the reader, all laced with Dickens inimitable humour, wit and lacerating political comment. This book aims to bring alive these characters and settings in the minds of children. It provides a comprehensive resource for children not only to learn about the literary heritage of the English language, but also to encourage them to create meanings from these classic stories through their personal, social and cultural experiences. The authors set each novel in context, providing a synopsis of the book, as well as characters, settings themes and symbolism. Works covered include: A Christmas Carol Bleak House David Copperfield Great Expectations Hard Times Oliver Twist But this book doesn’t just aim to introduce classic literature to children; it also provides a wide range of truly contemporary tools with which they can respond creatively, including: drama and film, blogs, web 2.0 technologies, multimodality and animation and graphic novels. The book is also accompanied by downloadable resources which contain chapter outlines, extended text extracts, and practical resource sheets, including PowerPoint presentations, book review templates and flash cards, as well as a set of 8 week lesson plans for each novel. The Essential Charles Dickens School Resource provides essential classroom learning material for teachers and literacy co-ordinators teaching Key Stages 1 -3, as well as CPD students and those studying on PGCE English/Drama courses.




Reading the Novel


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The Big Burn


Book Description

National Book Award–winner Timothy Egan turns his historian's eye to the largest-ever forest fire in America and offers an epic, cautionary tale for our time. On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men to fight the fires, but no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan recreates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, and the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, that follows is equally resonant. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. Even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by his rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service in ways we can still witness today. This e-book includes a sample chapter of SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER.




Charles Dickens as an Agent of Change


Book Description

Sixteen scholars from across the globe come together in Charles Dickens as an Agent of Change to show how Dickens was (and still is) the consummate change agent. His works, bursting with restless energy in the Inimitable's protean style, registered and commented on the ongoing changes in the Victorian world while the Victorians' fictional and factional worlds kept (and keep) changing. The essays from notable Dickens scholars—Malcolm Andrews, Matthias Bauer, Joel J. Brattin, Doris Feldmann, Herbert Foltinek, Robert Heaman, Michael Hollington, Bert Hornback, Norbert Lennartz, Chris Louttit, Jerome Meckier, Nancy Aycock Metz, David Paroissien, Christopher Pittard, and Robert Tracy—suggest the many ways in which the notion of change has found entry into and is negotiated in Dickens' works through four aspects: social change, political and ideological change, literary change, and cultural change. An afterword by the late Edgar Rosenberg adds a personal account of how Dickens changed the life of one eminent Dickensian.