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The Global Circulation of Charles Dickens’s Novels

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Literatures of Liberalization

Part of the book series: New Comparisons in World Literature ((NCWL))

Abstract

This chapter synthesizes research on the global circulation of Dickens and the place of Dickens in current debates about World Literatures and Translation Studies. It focuses on Dickens outside Britain, Europe, and North America, in terms of geography as well as literary traditions: New Zealand , Australia , Africa, Socialist Poland, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic, with some reference to more widely studied areas such as Spanish , Russian, and South Asian literary traditions. It urges us to think less in terms of originality and derivation than of circulation, appropriation, use, and their corollaries of triangulation, transculturation, revoicing, and (re)mediation. It considers the multiple meanings of “Dickens” in cultural translation and in global literary histories. Societies caught between traditional cultures and the forces of modernization give rise to “Dickensian” novels, “Dickensian” characters, “Dickensian” affect, “Dickensian” institutions and so forth, showing that comparable conditions give rise to formal resemblances.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Humanities, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Regenia Gagnier

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  1. Regenia Gagnier
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Correspondence to Regenia Gagnier .

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Gagnier, R. (2018). The Global Circulation of Charles Dickens’s Novels. In: Literatures of Liberalization. New Comparisons in World Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98419-3_5

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