This is a short summary that will help you write your post about "The signal man" by Dickens. Remember that the deadline is tomorrow, Wednesday 10 at 8.00 am. Including this post, you should have written four thus far. Tomorrow´s session will be devoted to:
1. Discuss "The signal man" (see questions at the end of this post).
2. Start writing your essay on any of the four topics discussed so far including "The Signal man" (see previous post). Deadline, Sunday 14.
3. Monday 15 will be devoted to discuss an overview of 20th century prose and poetry. I will present you with some of the main writers of the time. I will also leave two short stories by D.H. Lawrence (at the photocopying centre in Agustinas) that you are expected to read for Monday 22nd.
4. Monday 22nd. Analysis and discussion of D.H.Lawrence´s stories.
About Dickens and the Victorian age, as discussed in class, here is some contextual background:
- Keynotes of the Victorian age: progress, expansion, power and mobility (See Poplawski, P. (2008). English Literature in Context. CUP)
- 1830 Opening of railway lines in Britain: advancement, growth and difussion, awareness of interconnectedness, invention.
- Print culture proliferated and literacy rates increased
- Influence of the Romantic era on Victorian writers: ideas of liberty, individualism, the nature of subjectivity, emphasis on the self, emotion, imagination, relationship between man and the natural world.
- Social responsibility of the artist.
- The Victorian age witnessed the boom of economic expansion, transformation and hope in the first period, while in the second, it witnessed uncertainty and doubt.
Dickens´s fiction central metaphors: Fog, contagion, the prison. These three metaphors were best embodied in the word disease, both literal and figurative (cholera was a common disease at the time and it hit working-class communities very hard in the years 1831, 1848, 1853 and 1866). In Dickens´s writings one finds the idea of disease that spread through modern society and it immobilised it. His desire to represent the social realities of urban life are found in most of his writings. In "Oliver Twist" (1837-1838), the author depicts his own suffering during his childhood. At the age of 12 he starts working in a blacking factory. His family is sent to prison due to debt. He isn´t but this traumatic experience would influence his writing very much. At the age of 15 Dickens starts working as a free-lance writer.
"The Signal Man" was written after a railway accident which took place in 1865 that had a great impact on Dickens´s life.
When you write your post think of the following:
- What does the train represent?
- Think of the opposition between isolation and community.
- Think of the issue of social responsibility
- How is modernity depicted in this ghost story?
See you in class,
Claudia
