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CHRISTINE HUGUET and NATHALIE VANFASSE (eds), Charles Dickens: Modernism, Modernity (vol. i & ii). Éditions du Sagittaire, 2014, pp. 234 & 268. iSbn 978-2-917202-26-5 & 978-2-017202-27-2. euro20 + euro20.
The work collected in these volumes began life as papers given at an international conference in august 2011, at the Centre Culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle in normandy. They are themselves evidence of an increasing interest in Dickens and all things modern, stimulated no doubt by the international impulse towards taking stock prompted by the 2012 Bicentenary.
The language of the essays, complete with notes, individual bibliographies and an assumed awareness of critical literature, marks them out for an academic audience. what is rather exciting is that often their inspiration is taken from things we must all feel we have always known about Dickens's work. so, yes, it is really rather strange that Master humphrey is quite so attached to his clock (holly Furneaux, in 'Dickens, sexuality and the Body or, clock loving: Master humphrey's Queer objects of Desire'). and we would all, surely, acknowledge that Dickens's endings are not like the endings of other novelists (John o. Jordan in 'narrative closure in David Copperfield and Bleak house'). again, those European spaces that seem to...