Gillian Piggott, Dickens and Benjamin: moments of revelation, fragments of modernity [Book Review]

Moore, Ben 2014. Gillian Piggott, Dickens and Benjamin: moments of revelation, fragments of modernity [Book Review]. Dickens Quarterly 31 (3) , pp. 262-265.

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Abstract

Gillian Piggott's study of the resonances between the work of Charles Dickens and Walter Benjamin arrives in the wake of an increasing critical interest in Benjamin's life and thought, as an array of books from Graham Gilloch's Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City (1996) to Esther Leslie's biographical Walter Benjamin (2007), and beyond, makes clear. While many critics have addressed Benjamin's importance to discussions of nineteenth-century modernity, Piggott's is the first booklength attempt to compare Benjamin and Dickens. Fler goal is to produce a "creative comparison of the authors' responses to modernity" (4) rather than establish direct lines of influence, though she points out that Benjamin was aware of at least some of Dickens's work, particularly The Old Curiosity Shop and Great Expectations (11), and included fifteen entries about him in the Arcades Project (1927-40).

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Additional Information:	Copyright © 2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in DICKENS QUARTERLY, Volume 31, Issue 3, Spetember 2014, pages 262-265
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
ISSN:	0742-5473
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	06 May 2023 04:59
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/81890

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