Charles Dickens

Dickens is the Shakespeare of the nineteenth century. This is not to say that he equals Shakespeare--no writer is his equal--but Dickens echoes Shakespeare in his experiencing nature, in the fecundity of his imagination, in the magnitude of his achievement, and in his dominion over language. He reminds of us, too, of Shakespeare in the dramaturgic quality of his art. John Ruskin famously remarked that Dickens always spoke in a circle of stage fire. Finally, Dickens traces in his career that arc from romantic buoyancy to somber questioning that is so familiar from Shakespeare.

In his great books, Dickens constructs large mythic accounts of the human struggle for meaning in a fragmented, obscure, and yet expectant world. Behind the oddities and even grotesqueries of his plots and characters, we can see him inscribing both the recessed and the emerging forms of experience that shaped an indomitable, perplexing modernity.   It is as though Dickens had somehow swiped the blueprints of a world created by momentous economic, social, and moral forces.

Yet this is the same writer about whom his great rival, William Makepeace Thackeray, could say (in his review of A Christmas Carol) both truly and profoundly: "Think of all we owe Mr. Dickens . . . the store of happy hours he has made us pass. . . the harmless laughter, the generous wit, the frank, manly human love he has taught us to feel. . . Who can listen to objections regarding such a book as this?   .   .

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