Dickens and the Gothic

This Element explores how Dickens employs the Gothic in order to emphasise the importance of social reform.

Andrew Smith (Author)

9781009539104, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 October 2024

64 pages
23.5 x 16 x 0.9 cm, 0.24 kg

Dickens and the Gothic provides a critical focus on representations of social and psychological entrapment which demonstrates how Dickens employs the Gothic to evaluate how institutions and formations of history impinge on the individual. An analysis of these forms of Gothic entrapment reveals how these institutions and representations of public and personal history function Gothically in Dickens, because they hold back other, putatively reformist, ambitions. To be trapped in an institution such as a prison, or by the machinations of a law court, or haunted by history, or to be haunted by ghosts, represent forms of Gothic entrapment which this study examines both psychologically and sociologically.

Introduction
1. Prisons
2. History
3. Ghosts
Conclusion
References.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]