Spectral Dickens

2021 · Book · Alexander Bove, Anna Barton, Andrew Smith

Drawing on the recent ontological turn in critical theory, Spectral Dickens explores an aspect of literary character that is neither real nor fictional, but spectral. This work thus provides an in-depth study of the inimitable characters populating Dickens' illustrated novels using three hauntological concepts: the Freudian uncanny, Derridean spectrality, and the Lacanian real. Thus, while the current discourse on character studies, which revolves around values like realism, depth, and lifelikeness, tends to see characters as mimetic of persons, this book invents new critical concepts to account for non-mimetic forms of characterization. These spectral forms bring to light the important influence of developments in C19th visual culture, such as the lithography and caricature of Daumier and J.J. Grandville. The spectrality of novelistic characters developed here paves the way for a new understanding of fictional characters in general. "Spectral Dickens sets out to transform some of our most basic assumptions about literary characters, especially the implicit belief that the imitation of personhood underlies characterization as a form and typically dictates its success or failure. Bove's work illuminates a whole new dimension of the representation of character, a "spectral" dimension, by bringing a wider range of modern critical theory to the study of Dickens' illustrated novels, using in particular the three "hauntological" concepts of the Freudian uncanny, Derridean spectrality, and the Lacanian real to give new ontological dimensions to the basic question: "What is a fictional character?" Characters, Bove argues, are by nature uncanny in their very form. Thus, Spectral Dickens exposes a deficit in our current discourse on character studies, which implicitly revolves around values like realism, depth, and lifelikeness, but has very few concepts to describe non-realist and non-mimetic forms. Spectral Dickens fills in this gap in the field by providing new critical concepts to account for other forms of characterization, concepts like effigy, anamorphosis, spectral materiality, and distortion, all of which take into account visual artforms, like caricature and lithography, and foreground the role of form in mediating the seemingly rigid opposition between real person and fictional character. Ultimately, the idea of spectral characterization developed here will, as a more general theory, reach far beyond Dickens' characters to provide a richer and more nuanced understanding of fictional characters-not as imitations of reality, but as uncanny specters of the real." -- Back Cover. by Alexander Bove, Anna Barton