Dickens and Mass Culture

Juliet John author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:25th Nov '10

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Dickens and Mass Culture cover

That the idea of Dickens and the adjective 'Dickensian' continue to have a cultural resonance which extends beyond the book-buying public almost two centuries after Dickens's birth is testimony to his sense of himself as a mass cultural artist. Juliet John contends that Dickens's popularity is unique, different even from that of Shakespeare because, writing in 'the first age of mass culture', he was instinctively aware of the changed context of art, or of the need for popular art to find its place in an age of mechanical reproduction. Dickens and Mass Culture describes the ways in which Dickens envisioned and engineered his cultural pervasiveness, the media that enabled it, and the posthumous processes - technological, commercial, ideological, and emotional - that have perpetuated it. The first part examines Dickens's cultural vision and practice - his model of authorship, journalism, public readings, relations with America, and the machine. The second explores Dickens's screen and 'heritage' afterlives, as well as the visitor attraction, 'Dickens World'. His longtime presence on the ten-pound note symbolizes the book's guiding interest in the relationship between the commercial, cultural, and political aspects of Dickens's populist vision and legacy. John argues that the aspects of his art that have underscored critical ambivalence about Dickens - his relations with money, mechanical reproduction, and the mass market in particular - have ultimately ensured both his iconic cultural status and his centrality to the academic canon.

This is a valuable contribution to Dickens studies and timely in relation to the 2012 bicentenary, sure to establish Dickens further in popular culture. * William Baker, Years Work in English Studies *
persuasively argued [] a great contribution to cultural studies and to Victorian studies. * P.C Fleming, Review 19 *
Dickens Studies needs this book; the first to wrestle, in a detailed way, with Dickens's strangely overlooked relationship with mass culture ... [T]he richness of John's engagement with Dickens's mass appeal has provided Dickens studies with a crucial missing narrative. This will be a valuable book for thing theorists, those working in affect studies, reception studies and film studies, as well as Victorianists and Dickensians. * Holly Furneaux, Journal of Victorian Culture *
an incisive, challenging, and richly rewarding study, which firmly establishes her reputation in the vanguard not only of Dickens critics but also of cultural theorists and historians. Dickens and Mass Culture is a deeply informe, wise and hugely illuminating study of some of the issues central to Dickens's reputation from the 1830s to the present day. Juliet John is to be congratulated for the clarity and graceful tact with which she leads us through large issues of great complexity ... essential reading. * Paul Schlicke, Dickens Quarterly *
fascinating study ... The scope of John's analysis is most impressive ... Amidst the dizzying array of books published in anticipation of the Dickens bicentenary ... Dickens and Mass Culture [is] particularly notable ... Well-written, provocative, and historically informed ... fertile ground for further sustained investigation of Dickens's "grand design" particularly and Victorian cultural studies more generally. * Maria K. Bachman, Nines *

ISBN: 9780199257928

Dimensions: 223mm x 156mm x 22mm

Weight: 695g

334 pages