WiSe 17/18: PS-Surveying English Literatures II: Charles Dickens' Comedy and Satire
Sophia Charlotte Jochem
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‘His leading quality was Humour,’ wrote Charles Dickens’s close friend and biographer John Forster. Dickens’s satire repeatedly helped precipitate social reform, and his comedy shaped the sense of humour of generations of Victorian (and later) readers. At the same time, Dickens’s writing was instrumental in the formation of a genre – the Victorian novel – and ‘Humour’ became one of its integral elements, from Middlemarch to The Woman in White. Yet its role is mostly marginalised in modern critical readings of Victorian texts.
Charting Dickens’s comedy and satire from The Pickwick Papers (1936-7) via his collaborative work with Wilkie Collins to the short comic writings of the 1860s – immensely popular at the time but all but forgotten today – this class explores what readers of Dickens can gain by taking his comedy and satire seriously. Together we will compile a critical toolbox for working with humour and wit in literature, which we will add to and refine as we apply it to live texts. While practising close reading and other basic interpretative methods, we will in particular work on our ability to listen to texts, training our ears to the many aspects of comic writing that rely on sound and intonation.
Regular attendance, short presentations and participation in discussion are obligatory. Credits can be obtained by submitting a term paper.
Required texts: Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist – please get the Penguin Classics edited by Philip Horne; Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit – please get the Penguin Classics edited by Patricia Ingham.
close16 Class schedule
Additional appointments
Wed, 2018-02-14 16:00 - 18:00Regular appointments