Essential Dickens (part ii): Great Expectations

It is in David Copperfield and Great Expectations that Dickens creates some of the characters and scenes that have transcended the novels themselves and attained mythic status: Magwitch’s first appearance in the graveyard, Miss Havisham’s decaying wedding cake, the odious Uriah Heep, the brutal Murdstone, the moodswings of Micawber. It is also in David Copperfield that Dickens confronts his most painful childhood memories and some of the darkest corners of the Victorian unconscious. In this course, we will look at a range of issues, from absent fathers and father substitutes, to fallen women and revenge, to family secrets, crime and domestic space. These two great novels give perhaps the fullest display of Dickens’ genius for construction, wild comic imagination and his dark vision of childhood, family life and sexual passion.

This is Part II of a II part course. Part II is devoted to Great Expectations only and runs over 4 weeks 

Tuesdays 4pm – 6.30; £260