Reading Dickens Differently, edited by Leon Litvack and Nathalie Vanfasse

Abstract

Reviewed by: Reading Dickens Differently ed. by Leon Litvack and Nathalie Vanfasse Melisa Klimaszewski (bio) Reading Dickens Differently, edited by Leon Litvack and Nathalie Vanfasse; pp. xvi + 259. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019, $50.95, $41.00 ebook. This collection of twelve essays aims to break new critical ground with fresh approaches to the works of Charles Dickens. The editors frame the volume as a type of care work, a nurturing endeavor embarked upon to save Dickens's works from obscurity. This framing relies upon nostalgia for a time when Dickens's writings were universally valued, relevant, and beloved—an idealization that was always questionable and that this collection does not set out to interrogate. Still, Leon Litvack and Nathalie Vanfasse's goal of presenting [End Page 132] interdisciplinary, diachronous readings to invigorate a field of study is laudable, and the broad scope of this volume ensures that most Victorianists will encounter some essays of interest. Reading Dickens Differently is presented in three sections: "Reconfiguring," "Reincorporating," and "Resetting Dickens." The first section, "Reconfiguring," is biographical and dominated by a lengthy piece from Litvack that presents newly published information about the key role the Dean of Westminster, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, played in prodding Dickens's family to request a burial at the Abbey. Those interested in archival documents and granular detail about Dickens's funeral will find this section's emphasis on Dickens's burial compelling. It is less clear how the piece is "challenging a canonical view of the author" or leading to new insights beyond correcting some misunderstandings about how Dickens ended up buried in the Abbey against his own wishes (3). David Paroissien examines Thomas Babington Macaulay's influence on Dickens and the relevance of Macaulay's mode of historiography to Barnaby Rudge (1841). Lillian Nayder's piece on Dickens's relationship with his brother Fred in relation to fraternal dynamics and doubling in A Tale of Two Cities (1859) offers a more focused contribution to biographical studies. Similarly, Neil Davie's carefully historicized contribution on Dickens's acquaintances at London's Cold Bath Fields Prison, his views on prison reform, and Urania Cottage offers broadly relevant argumentation. The section as a whole, however, is not as methodologically innovative as the editors claim, which continues to hold true for most of the pieces in the volume's second section, "Reincorporating." A focus on the body—physical sensations and embodiments that cross boundaries between the imagined and the material—offers great potential for methodological innovation. Georges Letissier demonstrates how "somatic reading" can lead to new understandings of some of Dickens's descriptive techniques (95). In Dombey and Son (1846–48), for instance, "fleeting visual images force themselves in unrelenting, serial succession to the point of erasing the focaliser's consciousness" (99). Letissier draws parallels between fictional characters' hallucinatory states and the act of reading itself, urging those who read to engage in metacritical reflection on their own practice. Michael Hollington and Jeremy Tambling examine Dickens in relation to D. H. Lawrence and John Ruskin, respectively. Hollington outlines the trajectory of Lawrence's admiration for Dickens, which shifts to satirical targeting even as Lawrence's writing continues to exhibit stylistic similarities to Dickens's works. Tambling presents a dense web of linkages between Dickens, Ruskin, and J. M. W. Turner, identifying "Turneresque" (127) moments in Dickens's writing and noting that, although Ruskin's evaluations of Dickens were sometimes harsh, Ruskin "wants and needs" both Turner and Dickens in his thinking (145). Chris Louttit contributes the strongest piece in this section with a long-overdue critical assessment of posthumous illustrations of Dickens's works. Contravening early critics who maligned the original illustrations, Louttit not only offers astute analysis of the Household Edition illustrations but also ponders what a new digital resource, a Dickens Visual Archive, might offer. Imagining such a resource is exciting and stimulating in a manner that indeed leads to reading Dickens differently. As a unit, however, the pieces in this section struggle to cohere and to connect clearly to the volume's claim that it reincorporates Dickens, which exposes the collection's most glaring absence: race. [End Page 133] Particularly in a section addressing embodiment and corporeal concerns...