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Issue Details: First known date: 2012... 2012 Dickens Adapted
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

From their first appearance in print, Dickens's fictions immediately migrated into other media, and particularly, in his own time, to the stage. Since then Dickens has continuously, apparently inexhaustibly, functioned as the wellspring for a robust mini-industry, sourcing plays, films, television specials and series, operas, new novels and even miniature and model villages. If in his lifetime he was justly called 'The Inimitable', since his death he has become just the reverse: the Infinitely Imitable. The essays in this volume, all appearing within the past twenty years, cover the full spectrum of genres. Their major shared claim to attention is their break from earlier mimetic criteria - does the film follow the novel? - to take the new works seriously within their own generic and historical contexts. Collectively, they reveal an entirely 'other' Dickensian oeuvre, which ironically has perhaps made Dickens better known to an audience of non-readers than to those who know the books themselves.

Contents

* Contents derived from the Farnham, Surrey,
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England,
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United Kingdom (UK),
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Western Europe, Europe,
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Ashgate , 2012 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Heritage in Peter Carey's 'Jack Maggs', Colette Selles , single work criticism
Author's abstract: Rewriting Dickens's Great Expectations through Jack Maggs, Carey revisits the English literary heritage and the values of nineteenth-century England. This paper examines how Carey reconsiders that tradition and, from his postcolonial position, questions Britain's cultural and social heritage to present Australia as a new haven offering redemption and regeneration, the possibility of overcoming the haunting heritage of one's origins and past, which allegorically refers to the former colony itself (63).
(p. 447-459)
Missed Encounters: Repetition, Rewriting, and Contemporary Returns to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, Ankhi Mukherjee , single work criticism

'This article looks at rewritings of a well-made Victorian multiplot novel completed in 1862, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, to explore the dynamic between precursor and latecomer in terms of narrative operation. I am particularly interested in the remembering and reinterpreation of the literary canon, in acts of generative citation that bring the (Eurocentric) literary past to recurring life. The first section looks briefly at Kathy Acker's and Sue Roe's extrapolations of the classic and at Alfonso Curaron's 1998 film. The second section is a reading of Peter Carey's brilliant Dickensian pastiche Jack Maggs.' (p.109)

(p. 461-486)
The 'Crooked Business' of Storytelling : Authorship and Cultural Revisionism in Peter Carey's Jack Maggs, Laura E. Savu , single work criticism (p. 487-523)
Discovering New Pasts : Victorian Legacies in the Postcolonial Worlds of Jack Maggs and Mister Pip, Beverly Taylor , single work criticism
'Peter Carey's Jack Maggs and Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip, two recent works that 'write back' to Great Expectations, demonstrate how contemporary novelists can 'muck around with Dickens' to express postcolonial themes. This paper considers three aspects of their storytelling: references to abortion in Jack Maggs, which eschew contemporary ethical concerns to convey Carey's postcolonial critique; metafictive aspects of Carey's portrayal of the character Tobias Oates, with his many parallels to Dickens; and Jones's focus in Mister Pip on acts of reading and misreading the Victorian story. Considering these elements of the novels makes us more attentive to how writers and readers reinvest meaning in Victorian classics to suit our own cultural needs.' (Author's abstract p. 95)
(p. 525-535)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 27 Nov 2012 14:32:43
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