course description

This course will study Charles Dickens—the figure widely acclaimed as Victorian England's most visual novelist—through the lens of several media: photography, film, theatre, narrative painting, book illustration, and cinema. 

Among a range of topics, we will investigate the collaboration between Dickens and noted illustrators such as George Cruikshank and H.K. Browne; Dickens’ representations of the city; realism and the Dickensian novel; portraiture; serialization; Dickens’s use of melodrama; and film adaptations of Dickens’ novels.  This last topic will be of particular concern to us. In recent years, film scholars like Kamilla Elliot and Robert Stam have developed new means of approaching film adaptations, encouraging readers to think about literature and cinema as two different mediums each trying to tell a "story" in their own way. These critics also emphasize the importance of studying film adaptations within their historical and cultural contexts. In keeping with these approaches, we will look at a range of adaptations from different time periods, studios, and directors, asking how these films alter, comment on, and critique the texts they adapt. Just as importantly, we will address the issue of how and why the "classic" novels of Dickens were enlisted at specific moments in history: around 1911, when the move from single-reel to feature-length films in Hollywood required "respectable" subject matter for the screen; after 1934, when the establishment of the Production Code demanded that Hollywood produce "morally upright" films; and during and immediately after World War II when the devastation wrought in England propelled the British film industry to produce films that would stir national pride.

The primary texts we will read are Sketches by Box, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Bleak House.