Description
Book SynopsisDickens''s Idiomatic Imagination offers an original analysis of how Charles Dickens''s use of low and slangular (his neologism) language allowed him to express and develop his most sophisticated ideas. Using a hybrid of digital (distant) and analogue (close) reading methodologies, Peter J. Capuano considers Dickens''s use of bodily idiomsright-hand man, shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstoneagainst the broader lexical backdrop of the nineteenth century.
Dickens was famously drawn to the vernacular language of London''s streets, but this book is the first to call attention to how he employed phrases that embody actions, ideas, and social relations for specific narrative and thematic purposes. Focusing on the mid- to late career novels Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend, Capuano demonstrates how Dickens came to relish using common idioms in uncommon ways and the
