Naslov
Configurations of Society in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times

Autori
Knežević, Borislav

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria / The 7th Conference 2019

Mjesto i datum
Varšava, Poljska, 25.09.2019. - 27.09.2019

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Charles Dickens, industrial novel, class, exclusion

Sažetak
Often read primarily as an industrial novel, and sometimes seen as a somewhat simplistic account of industrial capitalism and the condition of the industrial working class in mid-Victorian England, Hard Times should also be read as a narrative informed by themes of exclusion from representation in the polity. While the novel does seem to be principally engaged in a criticism of Utilitarianism and political economy, it also features a concern with large parts of the population being kept outside of political society as well as with other forms of social exclusion. The novel does not directly address the question of suffrage ; its narrative effects in this regard are instead structured around a series of figures of exclusion, which should be read not merely as a catalogue of various forms of social marginalization, but also as mutually dialoguing thematic figurations. A central story of exclusion in the novel has to do with Stephen Blackpool, who belongs to the industrial working class, politically unenfranchised and socially marginalized, but who also gets ostracized from his own class. In a sense, it could be argued that the novel’s emphasis is at least as much on the political as it is on the economic, and in that context this paper proposes to examine the novel’s vision of the configurations of social and political privilege and exclusion in mid-Victorian England.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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