July 15, 2024 • 20 mins
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (1861) stands as a cornerstone of English literature, encapsulating Dickens' unparalleled talent to weave intricate plots with vivid characters against the backdrop of Victorian society. Our guest-speaker today is Prof. Joshua Gooch from D'Youville College in New York. Dr. Gooch's expertise is the intersections of work, power, and aesthetics in literature and film. He is the author of Dickensian Affects: Charles Dickens and Feelings of Precarity.
Recommended Readings:
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
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Episode Transcript
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Claire (00:05):
Welcome to the Global Novel, where literature comes
alive and is made accessible toevery corner of the world.
I'm your host, Claire Hennessy.
Today we explore the novelGreat Expectations by Charles
Dickens with our guest ProfessorJoshua Gooch from D'Youville
College in New York.
Dr Gooch's expertise is theintersections of work, power and
(00:27):
aesthetics in literature andfilm.
He is the author of DickensianAffects: Charles Dickens and
Feelings of Precarity.
Hi, Joshua, welcome to theGlobal Novel.
Joshua (00:37):
Hi Claire, it's nice to be here.
Claire (00:38):
Well, the reason why we choose Great Expectations today
is not just that this novelstands as a cornerstone of
English literature, but also itencapsulates Dickens'
unparalleled talent to weaveintricate plots with vivid
characters against the backdropof Victorian society.
Perhaps we can start with yourjourney of studying Dickens what
(01:01):
initially sparked your interestand which research experiences
have significantly impacted yourunderstanding of his works.
Joshua (01:09):
I mean everyone, I think feel like if you're in English,
you probably read Dickens atsome point.
I read Dickens in high schooland I had this.
I was reading it on my own,which I don't I enjoyed, but I
was reading it in an Englishclass and the professor, the
teacher, walks by and says, hey,you, we should add that to the
syllabus.
And then the rest of thestudents around me, I think,
wanted to throw books at me.
Um, but so that's where itstarts.
(01:30):
That was great expectations.
But in terms of of academics,um, early on as a graduate
student, I was taking a Deleuzeclass and I was taking a course
on mediated modernities withGarrett Stewart and we were
talking about our mutual friendin both classes.
Deleuze has this famous essayon singularity and it's the last
(01:55):
piece he writes in his life andhe uses this big passage from
our mutual friend, and so youknow, I started writing about
that and it became a chapter inmy disc.
It's a piece of my first bookand I really enjoyed that.
And when I was trying to finishthat book, I was part of an NEH
seminar with SharonAronofsky-Weltman at UC Santa
(02:18):
Cruz, which does the Dickensuniverse every year.
It's a great thing for peoplewho like Dickens and they often
have scholars and scholarlyevents tied up around with that
too.
And that was all focused onDickens and the stage which I
really hadn't touched at all andI was trying to figure out how
to make that chapter work as abook chapter and so reading
(02:41):
about that it was a lot aboutmelodrama.
So reading about that, it was alot about melodrama about
affect, about trying to getreactions from audiences and how
central that was to Dickens asa person, as a writer.
And that sent me back toDickens for the next project
where I was.
Just I was reading the oldCuriosity Shop and I thought
this is the weirdest book I'veever read and it makes me feel
(03:05):
weird, right, and I wanted towrite about that in terms of of
affect, and that's sort of howthis project got started Then
thinking about, well, what doesaffect do?
How does it work, how's itdifferent than sentimentality?
What does it mean to thinkabout literature in affective
terms, which is a very weirdthing when we think about it
(03:27):
conceptually.
I mean, I keep saying affect,but affect just means, I take it
at the most basic level, toaffect something or to be
affected by it, at the mostground level sense, and that
this is really tied up with forliterature scholars.
I think of it in terms ofrhetorical reading, where we
read texts to try to think abouthow they want to do a thing to
(03:48):
a reader.
They have a purpose.
It's not to say that thepurpose is everything that's in
there that's explicitly not whatI want to do but that when we
are reading, we're alwaysreading with that purpose in
mind and then thinking aboutwhat else it does.
And then, when you try toconnect that up with affect,
really interesting things startto happen.
And for me it was veryinteresting because it took me
(04:10):
back.
I did a draft of this book andwhen it went out I got reader
comments.
First reader comment was do youknow Garrett Stewart?
Have you looked at his work?
I'm like, yeah, I know Garrett.
Garrett directed my disc, sorealizing like how deep it was
in there, and then having tounearth more of it and then make
sense of how I wanted to read,how I wanted to think about
(04:32):
theory and the relationship ofhistory to cultural production
and what that means in a text,whether that's Dickens or
anything else, and so I thinkit's a very fruitful way of
thinking, but it's also yeah,dickens is where it all starts,
sort of Right.
Claire (04:49):
Well, there's something very interesting about what you
just said regarding the bizarre,the strange nature of Dickens'
works, because I do remember aprofessor in my grad school
mentioned great works alwaysweave the strange into the
familiar.
Well, speaking of Dickens'weave the strange into the
familiar, while speaking ofDickens' greatness during his
time, he was not only a prolificwriter but also a cultural
(05:14):
phenomenon.
So how was Dickens received inhis era and what made him such a
pivotal figure in Victorianliterature?
Joshua (05:19):
For the Victorians.
I think it's manifold.
But maybe the way for people tothink about it, if you're
coming to Dickens now, would bethat he starts off as a popular
comic writer.
So he writes these sketches.
Those are popular, and then hegets this opportunity to write a
long-form serial work, pickwickPapers, which is wildly
successful.
(05:39):
It's got all sorts ofcross-marketing.
It's a big thing.
All sorts of cross-marketing.
It's a big thing.
But this is.
You know, if you think aboutthis in terms of directors or
cultural producers, now, well,this could be the little place
where he slots into.
Oh, he's a comic writer and hejust does this stuff.
But the very next work he doesis Oliver Twist, which is seen
at the time as an interventionof social commentary on the new
(06:01):
poor laws.
You read it now and it seems alot of high melodrama and weird
comedy and lots of things thatseem out of keeping with what we
would think of now, I think, asrealism.
But at the time there was a lotof people very surprised at how
realistic the characters werein all of her twists and how
(06:22):
much that mattered.
So Dickens then sort of buildsup this persona as someone who
is both wildly entertaining andtaking up social commentary.
The book he writes after OliverTwist is Nicholas Nickleby,
which is both very long so manypeople don't read it and seems
oftentimes when you read it likean 18th century comic novel.
(06:44):
But at the heart of it is thiscommentary on the Yorkshire
school system, which was thisexploitative system of farming
kids out to schools that did nottake care of them and often
left them to die right.
So he becomes this writer aboutsocial problems, about in comic
form, and then in highmelodramatic form.
(07:05):
That's one way to sort of thinkabout him, for the sort of
style and the reason why I thinkhe's so successful over time is
that he builds this out into aunique style.
There's, and it's an affectivestyle, I guess is what we would
say when people would readDickens out loud.
Right, there are all thesestories about.
(07:26):
You would laugh and laugh andthen suddenly you'd be crying
and then suddenly you'd belaughing again and you wouldn't
know how you'd get back andforth between the two.
There's a famous passage inOliver Twist where he describes
this as the streaky bacon ofmelodrama.
Right, and that's what'shappening in there.
It's taking you up, it's takingyou down in these sort of wild
swings, and so I mean, some ofthe stuff I'm working or
(07:50):
building from is really focusedon that idea that Dickens
carries us along in this way andcreates these new kinds of
feelings so that they're notjust like one kind of feeling,
but Dickens is working on sortof spectrums of feelings and
trying to draw us across thosespectrums.
(08:10):
That's sort of what I think isunique and interesting about him
specifically, and forVictorians it was that idea that
you could read them and justhave this wild time and he's
always present, right?
I mean, he's writing in serialform, so he's coming out all the
time.
His early work is written.
He's writing bookssimultaneously, so he's
(08:31):
finishing one and startinganother one and publishing at
the same time.
So if you put it in terms ofwatching a television show or
some sort of thing that you'reused to that can be present in
your life most of the time,dickens could be present in your
life as a Victorian, prettymuch all the time, whether it's
in the books that he's writingor in the journals that he's
editing.
(08:51):
He's just there shaping whatpeople understood literature to
look like.
So by the time that he dies,victorian literature.
I think there's a reason why,when we think about it.
We think about it in largelyDickensian terms, even if people
will say I mean they're betterwriters.
And there may be right, peoplehave Eliot Dickens arguments,
(09:12):
but I won't do that.
Claire (09:13):
Right.
Well, dickens absolutely hasthis emotional roller coaster
effect, right, like you justmentioned, and this kind of
emotional affect istraditionally viewed as
sentimentality.
So I wonder if you could expandmore on where sentimentality
fits within the context of theVictorian novel and how your
(09:36):
affect theory, for example,informs our reading of Dickens'
works.
Joshua (09:42):
Okay, so let's see here the way that we get
sentimentality in literaturecomes to us through sentimental
literature.
But sentimental literature isplaying out philosophical ideas
that are being worked on in.
The Scottish Enlightenmentperson that I spend the most
time thinking about because Ithink I don't know if he's the
(10:05):
easiest, but he's certainly theclearest is Adam Smith, and so
Smith's theory of the moralsentiments is a way of thinking
about how do we relate to othersor feel with other people, so
that think about this inSmithian terms in a market
economy, in a place where socialconnections are not as clear,
(10:25):
you don't know somebody.
How do you relate to them orunderstand what they're feeling
if you don't know where theycame from or you don't recognize
them?
So Smith's ideas aboutsentimentality were all very
visually focused.
You see somebody suffer and youidentify with them.
This is the place wheresentimentality and Smith's word,
(10:48):
sympathy, has been reallypolluted by 21st century usage.
We think of empathy right nowin the way that Smith thinks
about sympathy, but you feel inthe place of that person as
they're suffering, and you thenmake a conscious decision about
how you feel about it.
You make a moral judgment aboutwhat's happening and what
they've done.
And so in sentimental literaturethere are often scenes where
(11:12):
it's built around, scenes whereyou are encouraged to feel by
witnessing the suffering ofother people and then making a
judgment about why they'resuffering and how the world
should be, why they're sufferingand how the world should be.
That's a popular 18th centurymode.
It's if you read something likeis it?
(11:34):
Mckenzie's man of Feeling is aclassic example of that kind of
book.
When I've had the briefopportunity to teach that kind
of book, students routinely hateit.
Like, just just hate thesethings because they're, because
they really are, they'repunctual, just these weird
scenes.
And you're like, well, I feelbad about that.
You're like, yeah, that's thepoint.
And then it just goes on toanother thing.
(11:54):
You're like, yeah, that's whatit does.
So when Dickens draws on this,he's drawing on these ways of
encouraging us to then see, feelwith people and make moral
judgments.
And because he's Dickens, he'sgot this strong narratorial
voice and usually the narratoris going to come in and help you
(12:15):
along.
In case you weren't sure, right, if you weren't positive about
how to feel about that scene,the narrator, nine times out of
ten, is going to tell you thatcan be true in sentimental
literature.
It doesn't have to be.
That would be, I would say, thesort of central piece, and
that's because Dickens is deeplyinfluenced by 18th century
writers.
He's read Smollett, he'sdefinitely read Goldsmith
(12:38):
McKenzie.
He knows this stuff and he'susing it because it is effective
.
But he's threading it throughwith these plots and then
specifically drawing on theconventions of melodrama and the
theater so that it doesn't feelso stilted and weird, like it's
just about showing you thingsand saying how do you feel about
it?
It's telling you a story andthen pulling you into that story
(13:03):
by asking you to feel with thecharacters and make judgments
about what's happening to them,and then, because of the social
commentary, about the broadersocial world, so that those two
things get connected in some way.
Claire (13:15):
I wonder if we can view the Dickensian effects as a
unique sort of narrativestructure, and how does this
theoretical framework intersectwith broader literary trends
such as structuralism?
Joshua (13:30):
So affect theory draws a lot on structuralism and sort
of a post-structuralist line.
Central difficulty that I'mtrying to deal with here is that
when we talk about structuresor, I'll say, like you know,
rhetorical organizations,there's a temptation to want to
say that any kind of problemsthat are out in the world or any
(13:52):
kind of differences throughoutthe world can only be registered
in a text if they are caught insome contrary form.
Right, so like these two things, and then they butt up against
each other because they don'tfit.
Well, okay, the place where itdoesn't fit must be where the
thing happens.
And what I really have beentrying to move toward and I'm
(14:13):
writing about this in otherplaces now is ideas that forms
are open and that they have tobe open because they're
constantly having tore-articulate to different
contexts.
So when they're producedthey're articulated to a
particular kind of cultural orconjuncture, one of Santa Marx's
sense, and then, as they getadapted in different places,
they have to change, they haveto remain open to those changes.
(14:36):
So where do we find those kindsof places of openness?
And I think that what it meansis that we look at how the
structures are constructed andthen we're looking for ways that
they're trying to reach out andopen up.
So they're working outward bycreating pressures that want us
to go in particular places.
But they may not know wherethey're going and they may have
(14:59):
effects that they are not incontrol of.
And one of the ways I wastrying to think about this.
What's great about structuralismis it can describe how things
Enclose and determine right, butit usually then operates on a
description of something asbeing Overdetermined, right,
it's there and then it's lockedin place.
And when I was writing thisbook I was very much thinking
(15:21):
about sort of althusserianoverdetermination in that sense,
and I've been reading more inthat vein and you see that
that's actually not what hemeans at all.
He's thinking in these openforms, but literary criticism
and the way that we've taken upthose ideas has very much
predicated.
Everything on the text isclosed, the social totality is
(15:41):
closed and things line up andthey get boxed in and whatever
is unthought is unthought in thetotality and it's unthought in
the totality of the text andit's unthought in the totality
of the world and you're likewell, that doesn't seem right.
If that's true, then nothingever changes and there's no
space for anything to arise oremerge.
(16:01):
That would be different andthere wouldn't be any space for
something to even change withina writer, like suddenly
everything just kind of like setand it didn't.
So you've got to think about,like, how do we get past that?
And one way to think about it ishow sentimentality is different
from affect, right?
So sentimentality is alltheories of sentiments.
(16:23):
It's a subject looking atanother subject.
So like a person looks atanother person and then makes a
judgment, right?
Affect theory says, well, wehave their feelings and you have
lots of different ones andthey're not always all in charge
and you're not subject to oneall the time, and they shift and
vary And're not a single person.
(16:43):
You're the fancy term I getfrom Massimiliano is an
individual.
Right, there are individualsand they're made up of lots of
them.
Well, if that's the case, thenthere are lots of different
possibilities where affect canmove or shift or shape, where
the determination isn't totaland things open up and can bloom
(17:03):
in new ways.
Right, and the way that I tryto describe this with Dickens
has to do with this story that Ithink 99% of the reading public
would have no knowledge of,which is that Dickens has other
Christmas stories, so he's got abig breakthrough with A
Christmas Carol.
Right, it's a brilliant storyand it creates this punctual
(17:27):
myth that people still use.
And if you look at the way it'swritten it's in these short,
clipped, ironic sentences Realfun story.
Basically, everyone can read it.
Well, the problem is it'swildly successful.
He doesn't control thecopyright.
It shows up on the theaterstage and he loses a bunch of
money.
So he's super mad.
He's like he hates losing money.
The next book he writes is theChimes, which is his second
(17:48):
Christmas tale, and he's goingto put it on the stage at the
same time that it comes out inwritten form.
So he's not going to lose anymoney and it's going to be huge.
And he's convinced it's thebest thing he's ever written.
And there are all these letterswhere he's performed it for
people and they're crying andthey're sobbing and he's
convinced he's like this isbetter than a Christmas.
(18:11):
Nothing's going to beat this.
This is the best thing I'veever written and it goes over
really well that year and itdoesn't last.
And when Dickens does hisreading tours later in his life,
he keeps trying to pull it out,thinking it's going to be a big
hit and nobody likes it and thelast time he performs it he
writes down like I really had tocut it to try to make it work
this time and no, it doesn'twork.
(18:33):
Well, that means somethingchanged and it's like well, did
it change in the text?
The text didn't line up withthe conjuncture, like there's
different affects moving indifferent conjunctures, right,
and so how those, how the textas a whole is working alongside
whatever that conjuncture lookslike, like those things aren't,
(18:58):
they're not vibing in the waythat they were when the chimes
first came out.
And that difference is reallyhelpful because we see that
Dickens understood it right,like he fully understood it
didn't work anymore, and then hestarts retooling it.
And the way that he's retoolingit is to try to make it work
for the audience.
At that moment he's payingattention to those affects and
trying to make them work.
So it can point to us, can showus, that this is what a text is
(19:20):
doing, and also that Dickensdoesn't always know fully why
it's doing it.
He just knows that it is.
So if a text can have thesesort of desires to make people
feel in this way, well, it alsoindicates that there's things
happening out in the world thatDickens may or may not know
about that are helping him buildon these feelings, or may not
(19:41):
know about that are helping himbuild on these feelings.
And so for me as a scholar, itmakes it much more interesting
to say, well, whatconjuncturally is happening that
might tie into this, stuff thatwe wouldn't think about.
Right, that's not the obviousthing where you know, oliver
Twist, oh, it's the new poorlaws, we're done.
There's other things happeningin the world at the exact same
time that seem disconnected, butif you push on them you say, oh
(20:02):
, there's an affectiveconnection.
Claire (20:09):
If you enjoyed this episode so far and want to catch
up with the second half of theepisode where Professor Gouge
discusses first-person narrativeperspective, multiple
narratorial voices andcharacterization in Great
Expectations, be sure tosubscribe at theglobalnovelcom
slash subscribe.
Thank you so much for listening.
Welcome to the Global Novel, where literature comes
alive and is made accessible toevery corner of the world.
I'm your host, Claire Hennessy.
Today we explore the novelGreat Expectations by Charles
Dickens with our guest ProfessorJoshua Gooch from D'Youville
College in New York.
Dr Gooch's expertise is theintersections of work, power and
(00:27):
aesthetics in literature andfilm.
He is the author of DickensianAffects: Charles Dickens and
Feelings of Precarity.
Hi, Joshua, welcome to theGlobal Novel.
Joshua (00:37):
Hi Claire, it's nice to be here.
Claire (00:38):
Well, the reason why we choose Great Expectations today
is not just that this novelstands as a cornerstone of
English literature, but also itencapsulates Dickens'
unparalleled talent to weaveintricate plots with vivid
characters against the backdropof Victorian society.
Perhaps we can start with yourjourney of studying Dickens what
(01:01):
initially sparked your interestand which research experiences
have significantly impacted yourunderstanding of his works.
Joshua (01:09):
I mean everyone, I think feel like if you're in English,
you probably read Dickens atsome point.
I read Dickens in high schooland I had this.
I was reading it on my own,which I don't I enjoyed, but I
was reading it in an Englishclass and the professor, the
teacher, walks by and says, hey,you, we should add that to the
syllabus.
And then the rest of thestudents around me, I think,
wanted to throw books at me.
Um, but so that's where itstarts.
(01:30):
That was great expectations.
But in terms of of academics,um, early on as a graduate
student, I was taking a Deleuzeclass and I was taking a course
on mediated modernities withGarrett Stewart and we were
talking about our mutual friendin both classes.
Deleuze has this famous essayon singularity and it's the last
(01:55):
piece he writes in his life andhe uses this big passage from
our mutual friend, and so youknow, I started writing about
that and it became a chapter inmy disc.
It's a piece of my first bookand I really enjoyed that.
And when I was trying to finishthat book, I was part of an NEH
seminar with SharonAronofsky-Weltman at UC Santa
(02:18):
Cruz, which does the Dickensuniverse every year.
It's a great thing for peoplewho like Dickens and they often
have scholars and scholarlyevents tied up around with that
too.
And that was all focused onDickens and the stage which I
really hadn't touched at all andI was trying to figure out how
to make that chapter work as abook chapter and so reading
(02:41):
about that it was a lot aboutmelodrama.
So reading about that, it was alot about melodrama about
affect, about trying to getreactions from audiences and how
central that was to Dickens asa person, as a writer.
And that sent me back toDickens for the next project
where I was.
Just I was reading the oldCuriosity Shop and I thought
this is the weirdest book I'veever read and it makes me feel
(03:05):
weird, right, and I wanted towrite about that in terms of of
affect, and that's sort of howthis project got started Then
thinking about, well, what doesaffect do?
How does it work, how's itdifferent than sentimentality?
What does it mean to thinkabout literature in affective
terms, which is a very weirdthing when we think about it
(03:27):
conceptually.
I mean, I keep saying affect,but affect just means, I take it
at the most basic level, toaffect something or to be
affected by it, at the mostground level sense, and that
this is really tied up with forliterature scholars.
I think of it in terms ofrhetorical reading, where we
read texts to try to think abouthow they want to do a thing to
(03:48):
a reader.
They have a purpose.
It's not to say that thepurpose is everything that's in
there that's explicitly not whatI want to do but that when we
are reading, we're alwaysreading with that purpose in
mind and then thinking aboutwhat else it does.
And then, when you try toconnect that up with affect,
really interesting things startto happen.
And for me it was veryinteresting because it took me
(04:10):
back.
I did a draft of this book andwhen it went out I got reader
comments.
First reader comment was do youknow Garrett Stewart?
Have you looked at his work?
I'm like, yeah, I know Garrett.
Garrett directed my disc, sorealizing like how deep it was
in there, and then having tounearth more of it and then make
sense of how I wanted to read,how I wanted to think about
(04:32):
theory and the relationship ofhistory to cultural production
and what that means in a text,whether that's Dickens or
anything else, and so I thinkit's a very fruitful way of
thinking, but it's also yeah,dickens is where it all starts,
sort of Right.
Claire (04:49):
Well, there's something very interesting about what you
just said regarding the bizarre,the strange nature of Dickens'
works, because I do remember aprofessor in my grad school
mentioned great works alwaysweave the strange into the
familiar.
Well, speaking of Dickens'weave the strange into the
familiar, while speaking ofDickens' greatness during his
time, he was not only a prolificwriter but also a cultural
(05:14):
phenomenon.
So how was Dickens received inhis era and what made him such a
pivotal figure in Victorianliterature?
Joshua (05:19):
For the Victorians.
I think it's manifold.
But maybe the way for people tothink about it, if you're
coming to Dickens now, would bethat he starts off as a popular
comic writer.
So he writes these sketches.
Those are popular, and then hegets this opportunity to write a
long-form serial work, pickwickPapers, which is wildly
successful.
(05:39):
It's got all sorts ofcross-marketing.
It's a big thing.
All sorts of cross-marketing.
It's a big thing.
But this is.
You know, if you think aboutthis in terms of directors or
cultural producers, now, well,this could be the little place
where he slots into.
Oh, he's a comic writer and hejust does this stuff.
But the very next work he doesis Oliver Twist, which is seen
at the time as an interventionof social commentary on the new
(06:01):
poor laws.
You read it now and it seems alot of high melodrama and weird
comedy and lots of things thatseem out of keeping with what we
would think of now, I think, asrealism.
But at the time there was a lotof people very surprised at how
realistic the characters werein all of her twists and how
(06:22):
much that mattered.
So Dickens then sort of buildsup this persona as someone who
is both wildly entertaining andtaking up social commentary.
The book he writes after OliverTwist is Nicholas Nickleby,
which is both very long so manypeople don't read it and seems
oftentimes when you read it likean 18th century comic novel.
(06:44):
But at the heart of it is thiscommentary on the Yorkshire
school system, which was thisexploitative system of farming
kids out to schools that did nottake care of them and often
left them to die right.
So he becomes this writer aboutsocial problems, about in comic
form, and then in highmelodramatic form.
(07:05):
That's one way to sort of thinkabout him, for the sort of
style and the reason why I thinkhe's so successful over time is
that he builds this out into aunique style.
There's, and it's an affectivestyle, I guess is what we would
say when people would readDickens out loud.
Right, there are all thesestories about.
(07:26):
You would laugh and laugh andthen suddenly you'd be crying
and then suddenly you'd belaughing again and you wouldn't
know how you'd get back andforth between the two.
There's a famous passage inOliver Twist where he describes
this as the streaky bacon ofmelodrama.
Right, and that's what'shappening in there.
It's taking you up, it's takingyou down in these sort of wild
swings, and so I mean, some ofthe stuff I'm working or
(07:50):
building from is really focusedon that idea that Dickens
carries us along in this way andcreates these new kinds of
feelings so that they're notjust like one kind of feeling,
but Dickens is working on sortof spectrums of feelings and
trying to draw us across thosespectrums.
(08:10):
That's sort of what I think isunique and interesting about him
specifically, and forVictorians it was that idea that
you could read them and justhave this wild time and he's
always present, right?
I mean, he's writing in serialform, so he's coming out all the
time.
His early work is written.
He's writing bookssimultaneously, so he's
(08:31):
finishing one and startinganother one and publishing at
the same time.
So if you put it in terms ofwatching a television show or
some sort of thing that you'reused to that can be present in
your life most of the time,dickens could be present in your
life as a Victorian, prettymuch all the time, whether it's
in the books that he's writingor in the journals that he's
editing.
(08:51):
He's just there shaping whatpeople understood literature to
look like.
So by the time that he dies,victorian literature.
I think there's a reason why,when we think about it.
We think about it in largelyDickensian terms, even if people
will say I mean they're betterwriters.
And there may be right, peoplehave Eliot Dickens arguments,
(09:12):
but I won't do that.
Claire (09:13):
Right.
Well, dickens absolutely hasthis emotional roller coaster
effect, right, like you justmentioned, and this kind of
emotional affect istraditionally viewed as
sentimentality.
So I wonder if you could expandmore on where sentimentality
fits within the context of theVictorian novel and how your
(09:36):
affect theory, for example,informs our reading of Dickens'
works.
Joshua (09:42):
Okay, so let's see here the way that we get
sentimentality in literaturecomes to us through sentimental
literature.
But sentimental literature isplaying out philosophical ideas
that are being worked on in.
The Scottish Enlightenmentperson that I spend the most
time thinking about because Ithink I don't know if he's the
(10:05):
easiest, but he's certainly theclearest is Adam Smith, and so
Smith's theory of the moralsentiments is a way of thinking
about how do we relate to othersor feel with other people, so
that think about this inSmithian terms in a market
economy, in a place where socialconnections are not as clear,
(10:25):
you don't know somebody.
How do you relate to them orunderstand what they're feeling
if you don't know where theycame from or you don't recognize
them?
So Smith's ideas aboutsentimentality were all very
visually focused.
You see somebody suffer and youidentify with them.
This is the place wheresentimentality and Smith's word,
(10:48):
sympathy, has been reallypolluted by 21st century usage.
We think of empathy right nowin the way that Smith thinks
about sympathy, but you feel inthe place of that person as
they're suffering, and you thenmake a conscious decision about
how you feel about it.
You make a moral judgment aboutwhat's happening and what
they've done.
And so in sentimental literaturethere are often scenes where
(11:12):
it's built around, scenes whereyou are encouraged to feel by
witnessing the suffering ofother people and then making a
judgment about why they'resuffering and how the world
should be, why they're sufferingand how the world should be.
That's a popular 18th centurymode.
It's if you read something likeis it?
(11:34):
Mckenzie's man of Feeling is aclassic example of that kind of
book.
When I've had the briefopportunity to teach that kind
of book, students routinely hateit.
Like, just just hate thesethings because they're, because
they really are, they'repunctual, just these weird
scenes.
And you're like, well, I feelbad about that.
You're like, yeah, that's thepoint.
And then it just goes on toanother thing.
(11:54):
You're like, yeah, that's whatit does.
So when Dickens draws on this,he's drawing on these ways of
encouraging us to then see, feelwith people and make moral
judgments.
And because he's Dickens, he'sgot this strong narratorial
voice and usually the narratoris going to come in and help you
(12:15):
along.
In case you weren't sure, right, if you weren't positive about
how to feel about that scene,the narrator, nine times out of
ten, is going to tell you thatcan be true in sentimental
literature.
It doesn't have to be.
That would be, I would say, thesort of central piece, and
that's because Dickens is deeplyinfluenced by 18th century
writers.
He's read Smollett, he'sdefinitely read Goldsmith
(12:38):
McKenzie.
He knows this stuff and he'susing it because it is effective
.
But he's threading it throughwith these plots and then
specifically drawing on theconventions of melodrama and the
theater so that it doesn't feelso stilted and weird, like it's
just about showing you thingsand saying how do you feel about
it?
It's telling you a story andthen pulling you into that story
(13:03):
by asking you to feel with thecharacters and make judgments
about what's happening to them,and then, because of the social
commentary, about the broadersocial world, so that those two
things get connected in some way.
Claire (13:15):
I wonder if we can view the Dickensian effects as a
unique sort of narrativestructure, and how does this
theoretical framework intersectwith broader literary trends
such as structuralism?
Joshua (13:30):
So affect theory draws a lot on structuralism and sort
of a post-structuralist line.
Central difficulty that I'mtrying to deal with here is that
when we talk about structuresor, I'll say, like you know,
rhetorical organizations,there's a temptation to want to
say that any kind of problemsthat are out in the world or any
(13:52):
kind of differences throughoutthe world can only be registered
in a text if they are caught insome contrary form.
Right, so like these two things, and then they butt up against
each other because they don'tfit.
Well, okay, the place where itdoesn't fit must be where the
thing happens.
And what I really have beentrying to move toward and I'm
(14:13):
writing about this in otherplaces now is ideas that forms
are open and that they have tobe open because they're
constantly having tore-articulate to different
contexts.
So when they're producedthey're articulated to a
particular kind of cultural orconjuncture, one of Santa Marx's
sense, and then, as they getadapted in different places,
they have to change, they haveto remain open to those changes.
(14:36):
So where do we find those kindsof places of openness?
And I think that what it meansis that we look at how the
structures are constructed andthen we're looking for ways that
they're trying to reach out andopen up.
So they're working outward bycreating pressures that want us
to go in particular places.
But they may not know wherethey're going and they may have
(14:59):
effects that they are not incontrol of.
And one of the ways I wastrying to think about this.
What's great about structuralismis it can describe how things
Enclose and determine right, butit usually then operates on a
description of something asbeing Overdetermined, right,
it's there and then it's lockedin place.
And when I was writing thisbook I was very much thinking
(15:21):
about sort of althusserianoverdetermination in that sense,
and I've been reading more inthat vein and you see that
that's actually not what hemeans at all.
He's thinking in these openforms, but literary criticism
and the way that we've taken upthose ideas has very much
predicated.
Everything on the text isclosed, the social totality is
(15:41):
closed and things line up andthey get boxed in and whatever
is unthought is unthought in thetotality and it's unthought in
the totality of the text andit's unthought in the totality
of the world and you're likewell, that doesn't seem right.
If that's true, then nothingever changes and there's no
space for anything to arise oremerge.
(16:01):
That would be different andthere wouldn't be any space for
something to even change withina writer, like suddenly
everything just kind of like setand it didn't.
So you've got to think about,like, how do we get past that?
And one way to think about it ishow sentimentality is different
from affect, right?
So sentimentality is alltheories of sentiments.
(16:23):
It's a subject looking atanother subject.
So like a person looks atanother person and then makes a
judgment, right?
Affect theory says, well, wehave their feelings and you have
lots of different ones andthey're not always all in charge
and you're not subject to oneall the time, and they shift and
vary And're not a single person.
(16:43):
You're the fancy term I getfrom Massimiliano is an
individual.
Right, there are individualsand they're made up of lots of
them.
Well, if that's the case, thenthere are lots of different
possibilities where affect canmove or shift or shape, where
the determination isn't totaland things open up and can bloom
(17:03):
in new ways.
Right, and the way that I tryto describe this with Dickens
has to do with this story that Ithink 99% of the reading public
would have no knowledge of,which is that Dickens has other
Christmas stories, so he's got abig breakthrough with A
Christmas Carol.
Right, it's a brilliant storyand it creates this punctual
(17:27):
myth that people still use.
And if you look at the way it'swritten it's in these short,
clipped, ironic sentences Realfun story.
Basically, everyone can read it.
Well, the problem is it'swildly successful.
He doesn't control thecopyright.
It shows up on the theaterstage and he loses a bunch of
money.
So he's super mad.
He's like he hates losing money.
The next book he writes is theChimes, which is his second
(17:48):
Christmas tale, and he's goingto put it on the stage at the
same time that it comes out inwritten form.
So he's not going to lose anymoney and it's going to be huge.
And he's convinced it's thebest thing he's ever written.
And there are all these letterswhere he's performed it for
people and they're crying andthey're sobbing and he's
convinced he's like this isbetter than a Christmas.
(18:11):
Nothing's going to beat this.
This is the best thing I'veever written and it goes over
really well that year and itdoesn't last.
And when Dickens does hisreading tours later in his life,
he keeps trying to pull it out,thinking it's going to be a big
hit and nobody likes it and thelast time he performs it he
writes down like I really had tocut it to try to make it work
this time and no, it doesn'twork.
(18:33):
Well, that means somethingchanged and it's like well, did
it change in the text?
The text didn't line up withthe conjuncture, like there's
different affects moving indifferent conjunctures, right,
and so how those, how the textas a whole is working alongside
whatever that conjuncture lookslike, like those things aren't,
(18:58):
they're not vibing in the waythat they were when the chimes
first came out.
And that difference is reallyhelpful because we see that
Dickens understood it right,like he fully understood it
didn't work anymore, and then hestarts retooling it.
And the way that he's retoolingit is to try to make it work
for the audience.
At that moment he's payingattention to those affects and
trying to make them work.
So it can point to us, can showus, that this is what a text is
(19:20):
doing, and also that Dickensdoesn't always know fully why
it's doing it.
He just knows that it is.
So if a text can have thesesort of desires to make people
feel in this way, well, it alsoindicates that there's things
happening out in the world thatDickens may or may not know
about that are helping him buildon these feelings, or may not
(19:41):
know about that are helping himbuild on these feelings.
And so for me as a scholar, itmakes it much more interesting
to say, well, whatconjuncturally is happening that
might tie into this, stuff thatwe wouldn't think about.
Right, that's not the obviousthing where you know, oliver
Twist, oh, it's the new poorlaws, we're done.
There's other things happeningin the world at the exact same
time that seem disconnected, butif you push on them you say, oh
(20:02):
, there's an affectiveconnection.
Claire (20:09):
If you enjoyed this episode so far and want to catch
up with the second half of theepisode where Professor Gouge
discusses first-person narrativeperspective, multiple
narratorial voices andcharacterization in Great
Expectations, be sure tosubscribe at theglobalnovelcom
slash subscribe.
Thank you so much for listening.
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