Charles Dickens. Modernism, Modernity ed. by Christine Huguet and Nathalie Vanfasse (review)

Abstract

Christine Huguet and Nathalie Vanfasse, eds. Charles Dickens. Modernism, Modernity, 2 vols. Wimereux: Editions du Sagittaire. 2014. Pp. 1: 234; 2: 268. 40 [euro]. The two volumes entitled Charles Dickens. Modernism, Modernity, edited by Christine Huguet arid Nathalie Vanfasse represent one of the last testimonies of studies, volumes, monographs, essays, articles, conferences, mass media events and public occasions dedicated to celebrations. This collection is based on the proceedings of a conference held at Cerisy-la-Salle, in Normandy, in the summer of 2011, which testified to the presence of some of the most influential scholars and Dickensians gathered to celebrate, once again, the Inimitable. The two volumes are divided into six sections, each treating a specific aspect of modern (and Modernist) temper. Christine Huguet's and Nathalie's Vanfasse's introduction is not just a presentation of the collection and of its contributions in general terms. Rather, it is a substantial essay that aims at studying Dickens' engagement with the modernity of daily life [that] reflects the new, heightened historical consciousness which is, in many ways, a major characteristic of the age (1: 29). Through a cross-Channel critical perspective, Huguet and Vanfasse treat modernite with reference to writers and intellectuals ranging from Chauteaubriand and Theophile Gautier to Charles Baudelaire, who is the main focus of their critical analysis. The first section (Urban Modernity) opens with Michael Hollington's essay on complex relationship with Paris, specifically his visit from November 1846 to February 1847, during a period of historical and political crisis for France. Paris for Dickens was a city that needed to be read in its multi-layered nature and its its synesthetic intensity. Its Morgue, for instance, represented a place of attractive repulsion for him, which explains his mixed opinions on monumental displays such as the Great Exhibition and the Crystal Palace. By suggesting that Paris was the means through which Dickens re-experienced London, Hollington introduces a paradigm of experiential re-creation that, in a way, lies beneath many of the other contributions. Francesca Orestano's essay presents a more explicitly comparative reading of and Woolf's responses to London as a modern metropolis, including a minute topographic investigation of the two writers' imaginative interaction with the unreal city. Like other contributors, Orestano demonstrates that--despite a long critical tradition juxtaposing Dickens the Victorian and Woolf the Modernist-- as far as London is concerned the two writers shared a mutual interest in the readability of the city, experienced as an ever-changing metropolitan text. Juliet John's contribution is written against the grain of a rather myopic critical view of subaltern popularity due to his alleged dissatisfaction with modernity, and to his difficulty in finding an interaction between individuals and nature (if compared, for instance, to Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy). On the contrary, John demonstrates that Dickens's visibility and the visibility of place/places, especially London, in his novels contribute to what we might call [a] brand recognition (1: 100). Robert L. Patten's analysis of Little Dorr it, a novel largely written in France, inaugurates the second section of the first volume (Modernity in/ and Motion). After having pointed out the importance of the French and British formulation of copyright laws protecting translations in 1852, Patten reflects on the multiple linguistically foreign, almost Babelic, elements that characterize Little Dorrit, arguing that in this novel Dickens meditated on the present and on the future of Europe (and of Western civilization) by means of a provincial English lens (1: 130). This is one of the reasons why Little Dorrit is described as a novel about translation and transition. …