Title: Charles Dickens : the uses of time /
Authors: Marlow, James E., 1938-
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press ; Associated University Presses,
Year: 1994
Subjects: Dickens, Charles, Criticism and interpretation.; Time in literature.
Abstract: Charles Dickens: The Uses of Time clarifies the antinomies that appear in Dickens's attitudes toward the past, present, and future. To do this, author James E. Marlow follows Dickens's personal and literary development through all his novels and many of his letters and journalistic pieces. For example, toward the past Dickens reveals diametrically opposing attitudes. A part of his own childhood was so painful a memory to him that he could not bring himself to tell his wife about it after twenty years of marriage. In his novels he developed a number of ways of dealing with the awful pasts, both personal and national. From denial to anger to acceptance, Dickens tried one method after another. As each failed to relieve his anguish, and even failed to rescue human feelings, he formulated another. This is what Marlow calls Dickens's "dialectic of the past."
Contents: pt. 1. The Abuses of Time. 1. The Dead Hand of the Past. 2. The Presence of Hunger. 3. Great Expectations: Fixtures of the Future -- pt. 2. The Uses of Time. 4. The Battle of Life. 5. Trust in the Present. 6. Beyond Forgetting: The Uses of the Past -- pt. 3. Conclusion. 7. Transcending Time: "Out of the Ruined Place."