{"product_id":"sensation-and-sublimation-in-charles-dickens-9781349293438","title":"Sensation and Sublimation in Charles Dickens","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book explores three crucial stages in Dickens'' on-going voyage of discovery into what has been called the ''hidden springs'' of his fiction; arguing that in three of Dickens best known novels, we witness Dickens responding to some identifiable force represented as coming from underneath the ground plan of the book in question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The reader of this excellent study of Dickens's Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, and Bleak House quickly becomes\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eenmeshed in Gordon's impassioned inquiries. Exhilarating reads, these serious novels provide inexhaustible material\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003efor critical analyses. Drawing on the work of such scholars as J. Hillis Miller, Terry Castle, and Michel Slater (author\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eof the magisterial Charles Dickens, CH, Apr'10, 47-4288), Gordon (Connecticut College) sheds light on Dickens's\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003emagical force. Among the topics he examines are pedophilia, anti-Semitism, industrialism, capitalism, and liminal\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eexperiences. Dickens's complex narrative style includes a variety of tropes - melodrama, fairy tale, the gothic. The\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ethree novels depict child sacrifice, corrupt patriarchs, and social disharmony. Oliver Twist is preoccupied by sadism\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eand infanticide, horrors Dickens buffers with Oliver's good fortune and hypnagogic trances. Dombey and Bleak\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHouse move beyond that fairy-tale world, dealing with contemporaneous social institutions and issues (railroads,\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ecapitalism, social leadership). In the complex Bleak House, women's trials constitute a special subset of issues as\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ewomen seek satisfaction in an elusive motherhood; the narrative intertwines a retrospective, wounded female voice\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ewith a dominating masculine presence. Thus the reader of the novelist's \"psychological pleasure palace\" is challenged\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eby alternative perceptions. Gordon's discussion of all this makes for an excellent book.\" - Choice\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\"With the two-hundredth anniversary of his birth imminent, we can expect a flood of books on Charles Dickens. I suspect, however, that few of them will display as much critical intelligence as Sensation and Sublimation in Charles Dickens, and I doubt that any will match the positively Dickensian energy, wit, and gusto that Gordon brings to his subject.\" - Austin Briggs, Tompkins Professor of English Emeritus, Hamilton College\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\"This astonishingly alert reading explores the tension between surface narrative and covert allusion. Its many new insights strengthen our sense ofDickens's creative brilliance anddeepenourunderstanding of three of his novels.\" - Robert Lapides, Professor of English, City University of New York\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat Right Have They to Butcher Me?' 'Thankee, Mum,' said Toodle, 'Since You Are Suppressing' 'In a Thick Crowd of Sounds, but Still Intelligibly Enough to be Understood' 'Is Esther Pretty?' and Nine Other Questions About Bleak House","brand":"Palgrave Macmillan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51742407328087,"sku":"9781349293438","price":40.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781349293438.jpg?v=1758384765","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/sensation-and-sublimation-in-charles-dickens-9781349293438","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}