Eileen Gillooly

This collection of literary criticism of Dickens is an excellent counterbalance for the many younger English lit majors who have been too influenced by high school teachers and college professors who denigrate Dickens and applaud Thomas Hardy and other “more serious” nineteenth-century British novelists.

I enjoyed reading Richard Moye’s essay “Storied Realities: Language, Narrative, and Historical Understanding,” the first sentence of which asserts that it is “a curious aspect of Dickens criticism that his novels elicit such intensely opposed valuations” (93). Moye analyzes Hard Times and argues that Dickens’ novel reflects a “deliberate aesthetic choice manifesting Dickens’s recognition of and struggle with the contradictions and tensions inherent to any representation of a social reality, past or present” (94). In other words, Dickens’ extravagant scenes, language, and plot devices reflect the “unreality” needed to represent real life.… (meer)