{"id":1324,"date":"2022-02-07T14:58:44","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T14:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/?p=1324"},"modified":"2022-02-07T14:58:50","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T14:58:50","slug":"dickens-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2022\/02\/07\/dickens-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Dickens’ Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

7 Februarty 1812<\/strong>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dickens\u2019 210th<\/sup> birthday today, as good a reason as any to spend a thought or two on this outstanding writer. It\u2019s even a platitude to say that the work of this most inventive of Victorian novelists has withstood the test of time (and shedloads of literary and autobiographical criticism to boot) and remains relevant, instructive and enjoyable to this day. Nothing could be a better reminder of Dickens\u2019s art, of his extraordinary treatment of language, than the following excerpt from Oliver Twist<\/em> of 1837-39, the foundational first of the whole host of new Realist Victorian novels to follow. As a fledgling text, this novel very much strikes us as experimental still, a laboratory of various narrative forms and styles, ranging from topical investigative journalism to educational journey, as in Bildungsroman, and allegorical morality tale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The passage below shows Dickens\u2019s full potential as narrative magician,\nwith similar fireworks going off in all of his later novels. New Victorian Realism\nin full cry: London waking up in the in the early morning to the hustle and\nbustle of a crowded day\u2026 The reader wonders: who is talking? It is not Sikes, nor\nOliver, who are walking across the stage here. When the prose heats up, the\nnarrator does the vanishing act of much of later Modernist \u2018free indirect\ndiscourse\u2019. Whose consciousness is streaming here? Might it be that of the big\ncity itself? I always ask myself in passages like this: was Dickens really in\ncharge of his writing here, or was he being written (so-to-speak) by language\nthat wants breaking out? One could say that langue is driving a coach and\nhorses through the authorial project in sections like this\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Martin Jesinghausen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Oliver Twist<\/em>,<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 21: The Expedition. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nwas a cheerless morning when they got into the street; blowing and raining\nhard; and the clouds looking dull and stormy. The night had been very wet:\nlarge pools of water had collected in the road: and the kennels were\noverflowing. There was a faint glimmering of the coming day in the sky; but it\nrather aggravated than relieved the gloom of the scene: the sombre light only\nserving to pale that which the street lamps afforded, without shedding any\nwarmer or brighter tints upon the wet house-tops, and dreary streets. There\nappeared to be nobody stirring in that quarter of the town; the windows of the\nhouses were all closely shut; and the streets through which they passed, were\nnoiseless and empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\nthe time they had turned into the Bethnal Green Road, the day had fairly begun\nto break. Many of the lamps were already extinguished; a few country waggons\nwere slowly toiling on, towards London; now and then, a stage-coach, covered\nwith mud, rattled briskly by: the driver bestowing, as he passed, an admonitory\nlash upon the heavy waggoner who, by keeping on the wrong side of the road, had\nendangered his arriving at the office, a quarter of a minute after his time.\nThe public-houses, with gas-lights burning inside, were already open. By\ndegrees, other shops began to be unclosed, and a few scattered people were met\nwith. Then, came straggling groups of labourers going to their work; then, men\nand women with fish-baskets on their heads; donkey-carts laden with vegetables;\nchaise-carts filled with live-stock or whole carcasses of meat; milk-women with\npails; an unbroken concourse of people, trudging out with various supplies to\nthe eastern suburbs of the town. As they approached the City, the noise and\ntraffic gradually increased; when they threaded the streets between Shoreditch\nand Smithfield, it had swelled into a roar of sound and bustle. It was as light\nas it was likely to be, till night came on again, and the busy morning of half\nthe London population had begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning\ndown Sun Street and Crown Street, and crossing Finsbury square, Mr. Sikes\nstruck, by way of Chiswell Street, into Barbican: thence into Long Lane, and so\ninto Smithfield; from which latter place arose a tumult of discordant sounds\nthat filled Oliver Twist with amazement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nwas market-morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and\nmire; a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle,\nand mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung\nheavily above. All the pens in the centre of the large area, and as many\ntemporary pens as could be crowded into the vacant space, were filled with\nsheep; tied up to posts by the gutter side were long lines of beasts and oxen,\nthree or four deep. Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves,\nidlers, and vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a mass; the\nwhistling of drovers, the barking dogs, the bellowing and plunging of the oxen,\nthe bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs, the cries of\nhawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides; the ringing of bells\nand roar of voices, that issued from every public-house; the crowding, pushing,\ndriving, beating, whooping and yelling; the hideous and discordant dim that\nresounded from every corner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid,\nand dirty figures constantly running to and fro, and bursting in and out of the\nthrong; rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene, which quite confounded\nthe senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Sikes, dragging\nOliver after him, elbowed his way through the thickest of the crowd, and\nbestowed very little attention on the numerous sights and sounds, which so\nastonished the boy. He nodded, twice or thrice, to a passing friend; and, resisting\nas many invitations to take a morning dram, pressed steadily onward, until they\nwere clear of the turmoil, and had made their way through Hosier Lane into\nHolborn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Februarty 1812: Dickens\u2019 210th birthday today, as good a reason as any to spend a thought or two on this outstanding writer. It\u2019s even a platitude to say that the work of this most inventive of Victorian novelists has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/312"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1325,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions\/1325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}