Reading Dickens's Bleak House.

Cover -- Licence and Use -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Contents, continued -- A Note on the Author -- A Note on the Text -- Chapter 1. Why read Bleak House? -- 1.1 Apocalypse Now? -- 1.2 Experimental Fiction -- 1.3 Reading for the plot -- 1.4 You, the Detective -- 1.5 Rewards -- Chapter 2: Dickens and his Times -- 2.1 Charles Dickens -- 2.2 Intellectual Context -- 2.3 Fictional Contemporaries -- 2.4 Topicality in Bleak House -- 2.5 The Law -- 2.6 Public Health -- 2.7 Constitutional Deadlock -- 2.8 Exploitation, appropriation, and philanthropy -- 2.9 Dandyism, Puseyism, Aestheticism, Aristocracy -- Chapter 3: Dramatis Personae -- 3.1 Caricature and Characterisation -- 3.2 Major Characters -- 3.3 Doubles-analogous and antithetical -- Chapter 4: Reading Serially -- First Instalment -- Second Instalment -- Third Instalment -- Fourth Instalment -- Chapter 5: Reading Analytically -- From Chapter 2, 'In Fashion' -- From Chapter 32, 'The Appointed Time' -- From Chapter 38, 'A Struggle' -- Chapter 6: Dickens's Craft -- 6.1 Narrative Technique -- 6.2 Serialisation: Pluses and Minuses -- 6.3 Satire, Irony, Humour, Comedy -- 6.4 Imagery and Symbolism -- 6.5 Language -- Chapter 7: Dickens and 'the Woman Question' -- 7.1 Nineteenth-Century Feminism -- 7.2 Is Esther 'a new woman'? -- 7.3 Esther's Engagement, Marriage and Bereavement -- Chapter 8: Reception and Bibliographies -- 8.1 Early Reception and Studies of Topicality -- 8.2 The Problem of Esther -- 8.3 Feminist approaches -- 8.4 Psychological Approaches -- 8.5 Deconstruction -- 8.6 Adaptations -- 8.7 Select Further Reading -- Literary Terms -- Humanities-Ebooks.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.