Kursinformation

1108-1: Seminar Anglophone Kinderliteratur: Dickens’s Children

montags 17.15-18.45 Uhr, Seminargebäude S 105; Dietmar Böhnke

Reading list:

Gottlieb, Robert (2012), Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Hawes, Donald (2007), Charles Dickens. Continuum; Jordan, John O., ed. (2001), The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. CUP; Ledger, Sally and Holly Furneaux, eds. (2011), Charles Dickens in Context. CUP; Leitch, Thomas (2007), Film Adaptation and its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Johns Hopkins UP; Mee, Jon (2010), The Cambridge Introduction to Charles Dickens. CUP; Pykett, Lyn (2002), Charles Dickens. Palgrave; Tomalin, Claire (2012), Charles Dickens: A Life. Penguin.

Exam: research project in this course or in course 1108-2

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is not only the most famous English novelist of the Victorian (and arguably any) period, he is also often seen as a ‘children’s author’ or author of ‘children’s literature’ and a champion of children’s rights. However, the only texts he expressly wrote for children, like his Child’s History of England or A Holiday Romance, are little known today. In this course, we will be investigating the question of ‘Dickens’s children’ from these and some other perspectives: his child protagonists (such as Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger, Little Nell, Tiny Tim and Paul Dombey), the role of childhood and education in his works (for example in Hard Times, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations), Dickens’s own childhood and his ten children (nine of whom survived into adulthood, and one of whom came to stay in Leipzig for two years in the 1850s), as well as Thomas Leitch’s idea of “entry-level Dickens” (that is, children’s knowledge of Dickens’s works and characters through adaptations such as Mickey’s or The Muppet Christmas Carol). Above all, however, we will be reading, analysing and enjoying Dickens’s wonderful writings and some of their adaptations. You need to be prepared to actually read one or two of those “large, loose, baggy monsters” (in Henry James’s words).