Dickens's London : perception, subjectivity and phenomenal urban multiplicity /

Wolfreys's phenomenological study presents excerpts from numerous Charles Dickens works, from Sketches by Boz to The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Wolfreys (Loughborough Univ., UK) suggests that Dickens writes of the surface of things; that these passages make the ordinary, teeming city of London seem exotic--both dirty and pristine, noisy and quiet, Gothic and ironic. Throughout the book, Wolfreys responds to the ideas of writers G. K. Chesterton, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Walter Benjamin. In poststructuralist fashion, Wolfreys divides his excerpts into alphabetical chapters, but leaves "Y" and "Z" untreated to signify that "the subject never reaches an end." This alphabetical organization emphasizes the lack of unity that Wolfreys finds in the material: chapters randomly connect to one another in his arbitrary ordering of the text. The author notes that Dickens presents London through a subjective narrator; a fictive creation. He argues that Dickens focuses on the materiality of London, and suggests that Dickens delighted in using words for their emotive weight. This allowed him to play with repetition, balance, and flair--qualities that Wolfreys displays abundantly here. Maps and pictures of London illustrate the text. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general audiences. M. S. Stephenson University of Texas at Brownsville