This volume shows how highly conscious Dickens was of words – of their meaning of course, and of the ideas they conjured up, but also of their very substance, texture, plasticity, visuality, and resonance, as well as their interactions with other words, and with their cultural environment. Each keyword is treated not as a semantic unit with a fixed meaning but rather as a flexible linguistic construct. Some keywords are just a word, a characteristic or even idiosyncratic lexical unit; some are treated as a load-bearing conceptual category or theme; some disintegrate into noise, complicating readers’ assumptions about what a keyword must be. The focus shifts from ‘word’ at micro- to macro-levels of signification, at times denoting wider cultural usage. Dynamic relations, oppositions, correlations and overlappings result from these individualized reading journeys, creating unforeseen and rich systems of meaning.
Over de auteur
Nathalie Vanfasse is Professor of English at Aix-Marseille University, France. She is the author of “Dickens, entre normes et déviance”, short-listed for the 2008 French MLA prize; and of “La plume et la route: Charles Dickens écrivain-voyageur”, awarded the 2018 SELVA prize.
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