Dickens-to-Go Episodes 21-30

In this video series, members of the Dickens Universe community share a favorite passage from Dickens and say a few words about why they selected it. We hope this video series can remind us of what we have in common and what we can look forward to when our annual conferences resume.


 

Dickens's Favorite Son

Phyllis Orrick, a former journalist and retired research editor at UC Berkeley returns to discuss a novel "built around a character who represents the purest version of the ideal of the boy-child/son Dickens so often alludes to with obvious affection throughout his works," Barnaby Rudge.

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Conscience is a Dreadful [and Slippery] Thing

Summer Star, Associate Professor of English at San Francisco State University, shares a passage from Great Expectations about moral consciousness. She describes it as "one of the most brilliant, humorous, and physical allegories for moral discomfort I have ever encountered: having a slice of buttered bread down one's pant leg."

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Sounding Out Scrooge

Reading A Christmas Carol aloud brings new immersive delights to the story. Helene Androski retired Reference and Instruction Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison demonstrates with a favorite passage describing Scrooge.

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The Carol Philosophy

Carl Wilson, Friends of the Dickens Project Board Member, discusses the charity, altruism, and redemption behind Dickens's Carol Philosophy.

 

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When the Miser Met the Martian: A Sci-Fi Dickensian Drama

Marty Gould, Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Florida, describes how Dickens’s Christmas classic is an inventive reimagining via a popular interest in interplanetary communication, Richard Ganthony’s play A Message from Mars gave A Christmas Carol a timely update.

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Marley's Chains

Susan Zieger, Professor of English at UC Riverside, discusses two essential elements in the interactions between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley's Ghost in Stave One of A Christmas Carol: humor as a counterpoint to the last judgment and the metaphor of the chain.

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Wilkins Micawber

Friends of the Dickens Project Board Member and Dickens Universe auctioneer, Tim Clark, reprises his role from the 2009 Dickens Universe Farce as Wilkins Micawber.

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A Green Old Age

In this week's installment, Tyger Wright, a Santa Cruz based artist, highlights a passage in Barnaby Rudge where Dickens pays "tender attention to a population that is often marginalized, our elders."

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Looking Before and After: Plotting with David Copperfield

Citing two pivotal passages from David Copperfield, Friends of the Dickens Project Board Member, Wayne Batten, illuminates the links connecting Clara Copperfield, Betsey Trotwood, and Dora Copperfield.

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Hairdresser Heroine

With over one thousand created characters, it has been said that one will never meet a person whom they hadn't encountered within the pages of a Charles Dickens novel. In David Copperfield, retired clergyman Larry Hicks finds a heroine who reminds him of a childhood friend.

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See Also