Book Launch - Peter Capuano - Dickens's Idiomatic Imagination: The Inimitable and Victorian Body Language
Date and Time for this Past Event
- Thursday, Feb 1, 2024 5:30pm - 7pm
Location
Francie & Finch Bookshop
Category
Details
Join us for a conversation between Peter Capuano and Laura White about Dr. Capuano's new book, "Dickens's Idiomatic Imagination: The Inimitable and Victorian Body Language".
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Dickens's Idiomatic Imagination offers an original analysis of how Charles Dickens's use of "low" and "slangular" (his neologism) language allowed him to express and develop his most sophisticated ideas. Using a hybrid of digital (distant) and analogue (close) reading methodologies, Peter J. Capuano considers Dickens's use of bodily idioms--"right-hand man," "shoulder to the wheel," "nose to the grindstone"--against the broader lexical backdrop of the nineteenth century
Dickens was famously drawn to the vernacular language of London's streets, but this book is the first to call attention to how he employed phrases that embody actions, ideas, and social relations for specific narrative and thematic purposes. Focusing on the mid-to late career novels Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend, Capuano demonstrates how Dickens came to relish using common idioms in uncommon ways and the possibilities they opened up for artistic expression. Dickens's Idiomatic Imagination establishes a unique framework within the social history of language alteration in nineteenth-century Britain for rethinking Dickens's literary trajectory and its impact on the vocabularies of generations of novelists, critics, and speakers of English.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Peter J. Capuano is an Associate Professor of English and a Faculty Fellow in the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) at the University of Nebraska. He is the author of Changing Hands.
ABOUT LAURA WHITE:
Dr. Laura White is the John E. Weaver Professor of English and Chair of the Undergraduate Program and Curriculum Committee. Her publications include essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, R.L. Stevenson, Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, and Wallace Stevens, among others.
Contact F&F to Pre-Order a Copy of
DICKENS’S IDIOMATIC IMAGINATION
