Dickensian Resonances in the Contemporary English Novel

The commanding presence of Dickens in contemporary English and Anglophone fiction, together with other authors, is now an acknowledged fact . So, good question to begin with could be: why this interest in Age and literature, and in Dickens in particular? Let me suggest few answers as an introduction to my topic. Attention to Age developed steadily throughout twentieth century, passing through various phases until it reached tipping point in 1950s when serious revaluation began, initiated in United States (1) and then in England as studies took their place in university curriculum. It is against this cultural background that phenomenon of nostalgia for, and critique of, and literature situates itself, and that politics of Victoriana emerges. Cora Kaplan deals with this phenomenon in introduction to her book Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism (2007). She begins by mentioning Brian Moore's comic novel The Great Collection (1975), whose protagonist, Canadian assistant professor of British researching things, dreams that he is walking through an exhibit of objects reproducing those on display in Great Exhibition of 1851. Kaplan defines this novel as a meditation on modern obsession with things Victorian (1), a surreal metacommentary on impossible desire to possess (88), to it through its remains: the physical and written forms that are its material history (1). It is well known that, since late 1960s, starting with Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), considerable number of historical novels (also film and television adaptations) have appeared which feature period and adopt narrative conventions inscribed within more general postmodern modality of revisiting past in form of sequels, parodies and pastiches. Concerning this, John Kucich and Diane SadofF remark that, in spite of abundant critical material on postmodernism, and of studies touching on postmodern returns to texts, there has been very little scholarly work that has attempted to historicise postmodern rewritings of culture. Kucich and Sadoff address this gap with intention of beginning a discussion of postmodernism's privileging of as its historical 'other' (x-xi). A variety of factors account for this resurgence of interest, they assert, including emergence of cultural studies, new historicism, interest in narrative that evokes nostalgia for nineteenth-century aesthetic forms, the rise of women into positions of cultural authority as both producers and consumers, and related discourses of gender and postcolonial theory. All of them combined, they conclude, constitute network of overdeterminations that privileges period as site of historical emergence through which postmodernism attempts to think its own cultural identity (xxv-vi). (2) This phenomenon has been variously interpreted. Robin Gilmour, for example, refers to publishing industry with its links to expansion of British higher education and study of literature and history, which has led to growth of paperback market in fiction. Interest in nineteenth-century novels, he suggests, reflects certain powerful narrative simplicities such as pleasure of plot, Romance and romantic love (198). To which I would add appeal of characterization, presence of an (often) opinionated omniscient narrator, and various ingredients, including sex, point made by Cora Kaplan (86). But literary phenomenon of neo-Victorianism, I suggest, is also connected to opportunities period offers today's novelists. Gilmour usefully characterizes these as follows: historical novel written from modern perspective (J. …

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