Dickens and Landscape Discourse (Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature)

Dickens and Landscape Discourse is a contextual study, offering valuable insights into the significance of geographical and social placement in nineteenth-century literature. Jane H. Berard considers landscape contexts available to Dickens, such as topographical poetry, antiquarianism, tourism, John Britton’s Beauties of Wiltshire, and the landscape discourse in Dickens’ other works to open up a reading of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44), set in Wiltshire. Though Dickens can be seen reflecting or resisting the value-laden discourses embedded in his landscapes, he communicates to his readers of Martin Chuzzlewit through an interactive, oppositional, and subversive social discourse to expose a landscape of death and the Victorians’ struggle for control over their situation.