John Glavin – författare

Television and film, not libraries or scholarship, have made Charles Dickens the most important unread novelist in English. It is not merely that millions of people feel comfortable deploying the word 'Dickensian' to describe their own and others' lives, but that many more people who have never read Dickens know what Dickensian means. They know about Dickens because they have access to over a century of adaptations for the big and small screen. Because Dickens has proven to be the most easily adapted of major novelists, he has become, somewhat ironically, one of the foremost novelists in the English canon. This is ironic because it was just this capacity to entertain that once confined him to the margins of the 'great tradition' in fiction. Dickens on Screen is an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike. It provides an exhaustive filmography and is well illustrated.

After Dickens is both a performative reading of Dickens the novelist and an exploration of the potential for adaptive performance of the novels themselves. John Glavin conducts a historical inquiry into Dickens's relationship to the theatre and theatricality of his own time, and uncovers a much more ambivalent, often hostile, relationship than has hitherto been noticed. In this context, Dickens's novels can be seen as a form of counter-performance, one which would allow the author to perform without being seen or scrutinized. But Glavin also identifies a rich performative potential in Dickens's fiction, and describes new ways to stage that fiction in emotionally powerful, critically acute adaptations. The book as a whole, therefore, offers a reading of Dickens through an unusual alliance between literary criticism and theatrical performance.

After Dickens is both a performative reading of Dickens the novelist and an exploration of the potential for adaptive performance of the novels themselves. John Glavin conducts a historical inquiry into Dickens's relationship to the theatre and theatricality of his own time, and uncovers a much more ambivalent, often hostile, relationship than has hitherto been noticed. In this context, Dickens's novels can be seen as a form of counter-performance, one which would allow the author to perform without being seen or scrutinized. But Glavin also identifies a rich performative potential in Dickens's fiction, and describes new ways to stage that fiction in emotionally powerful, critically acute adaptations. The book as a whole, therefore, offers a reading of Dickens through an unusual alliance between literary criticism and theatrical performance.

Television and film, not libraries or scholarship, have made Charles Dickens the most important unread novelist in English. It is not merely that millions of people feel comfortable deploying the word 'Dickensian' to describe their own and others' lives, but that many more people who have never read Dickens know what Dickensian means. They know about Dickens because they have access to over a century of adaptations for the big and small screen. Because Dickens has proven to be the most easily adapted of major novelists, he has become, somewhat ironically, one of the foremost novelists in the English canon. This is ironic because it was just this capacity to entertain that once confined him to the margins of the 'great tradition' in fiction. Dickens on Screen is an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike. It provides an exhaustive filmography and is well illustrated.

From their first appearance in print, Dickens's fictions immediately migrated into other media, and particularly, in his own time, to the stage. Since then Dickens has continuously, apparently inexhaustibly, functioned as the wellspring for a robust mini-industry, sourcing plays, films, television specials and series, operas, new novels and even miniature and model villages. If in his lifetime he was justly called 'The Inimitable', since his death he has become just the reverse: the Infinitely Imitable. The essays in this volume, all appearing within the past twenty years, cover the full spectrum of genres. Their major shared claim to attention is their break from earlier mimetic criteria - does the film follow the novel? - to take the new works seriously within their own generic and historical contexts. Collectively, they reveal an entirely 'other' Dickensian oeuvre, which ironically has perhaps made Dickens better known to an audience of non-readers than to those who know the books themselves.