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Discovering New Pasts : Victorian Legacies in the Postcolonial Worlds of Jack Maggs and Mister Pip single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Discovering New Pasts : Victorian Legacies in the Postcolonial Worlds of Jack Maggs and Mister Pip
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'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)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Victorian Studies vol. 52 no. 1 Autumn 2009 Z1808413 2009 periodical issue 2009 pg. 95-105
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Dickens Adapted John Glavin (editor), Farnham : Ashgate , 2012 Z1903348 2012 anthology criticism 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. Farnham : Ashgate , 2012 pg. 525-535
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Last amended 27 Nov 2012 14:34:54
95-105 Discovering New Pasts : Victorian Legacies in the Postcolonial Worlds of Jack Maggs and Mister Pipsmall AustLit logo Victorian Studies
525-535 Discovering New Pasts : Victorian Legacies in the Postcolonial Worlds of Jack Maggs and Mister Pipsmall AustLit logo
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