Dickens and Comedy
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Eventual Laughter: Dickens and Comedy A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2014 Alfie Bown School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Table of Contents Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... 2 Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 6 Declaration .................................................................................................................................... 7 Copyright Statement .................................................................................................................... 8 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... 9 Introduction: Dickens and Laughter ....................................................................................... 10 Section One: Reading Laughter................................................................................................ 24 Chapter One: Laughter as Liberation ...................................................................................... 28 Chapter Two: Laughter and Control ....................................................................................... 37 Chapter Three: Laughter as Event ........................................................................................... 50 Section Two: Dickens and Laughter ........................................................................................ 73 Chapter Four: Dickens’s Events ............................................................................................... 75 Chapter Five: Pickwick Papers and Natural Laughter .......................................................... 104 Chapter Six: Barnaby Rudge and Anxiety .............................................................................. 131 Chapter Seven: Great Expectations and Comic Plots ............................................................ 160 Conclusion: Bourgeois Comedy ............................................................................................. 185 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 198 Word Count: 78, 286 2 Abbreviations References to Dickens are indicated by the abbreviations below from the new Penguin editions unless otherwise specified. Where other editions of Dickens have been consulted this has been noted in the footnotes. For the journalism I have used the complete All The Year Round and Household Words made available by Periodicals Archive Online, which are indicated by both issue number and date. For these I have also consulted Dickens’s Journalism: The Dent Uniform Edition, ed. Michael Slater and John Drew, 4 vols. (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1994-2000). Letters are indicated by volume and date and are from Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Madeline House and Graham Storey, 1965-2002 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). AN American Notes AYR All The Year Round BH Bleak House BR Barnaby Rudge CC A Christmas Carol DC David Copperfield DS Dombey and Son GE Great Expectations HTI Holly-Tree Inn HW Household Words LD Little Dorrit Letters Letters of Charles Dickens 3 MC Martin Chuzzlewit OCS The Old Curiosity Shop PI Pictures from Italy PP Pickwick Papers All references to Shakespeare are from the Norton Critical Edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (London: Norton, 1997). All references to Forster’s Life of Dickens are from John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (London: Chapman & Hall Ltd, nd). All references to Freud are from Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. by James Strachey and others, 24 vols. (London: Vintage, 2001). References to major Jacques Lacan texts are as follows: S1 Jacques Lacan, Freud’s Papers on Technique, ed. Jacques Alain-Miller, trans. James Forrester (London: Norton, 1991). S7 Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques Alain-Miller, trans. Dennis Porter (London: Norton, 1992). S10 Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire: Livre X : L'Angoisse 1962-1963, ed. Jacques Alain- Miller (Paris: Seuil, 2004).1 S11 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques Alain-Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Norton, 1998). 1 Translations from this seminar is my own, although it owes much to the unofficial online translations of Cormac Gallagher. Changes have been made where it is felt that something of the French has been lost in those translations. Those translations can be accessed at lacaninireland.com. The new 2014 translation has been consulted and compared and its reference is Jacques Lacan, Anxiety, ed. Jacques Alain-Miller (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014). 4 S17 Jacques Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques Alain-Miller, trans. Russel Grigg (London: Norton, 2007) . S20 Jacques Lacan, Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, ed. Jacques Alain-Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (London: Norton, 1999). Ecrits Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1989). 5 Abstract This thesis attempts to redress the drought of work on Dickens on comedy, which is surprising considering how often Dickens is thought of as a comic writer. The thesis uses Dickens to demonstrate problems with and resistance to existing theorizations of laughter, and attempts to develop a new way of thinking about laughter through Dickens. The thesis begins with a theoretical section, which is a discussion of existing discussions of laughter followed by an attempt to develop a new way of thinking about laughter by making use Alain Badiou’s concept of the ‘event.’ The thesis then moves to Section Two, in which these ideas are discussed alongside Dickens’s novels. Chapter Four attempts to show in a general way how Dickens and these discussions of laughter belong together, and how a certain moment in the nineteenth century that Dickens was a unique part of shows that new ways of discussing laughter are needed. Chapter Five argues that laughter in Dickens is not natural or spontaneous but part of constructing an idea of natural spontaneity. Pickwick Papers, it is argued, is the novel of retroactive causes, showing how laughter can create ideas of ‘nature’ which then appear to explain social behaviour such as laughter itself. Chapter Six tackles the relationship between laughter and anxiety. It argues that laughter creates order by ‘dealing’ with anxiety, but that this order it produces is profoundly unstable and has new anxieties. Barnaby Rudge is the novel which shows this in its particular historical context. The final chapter argues that Dickens’s writing can be called ‘comic’ in the terms that have been established throughout the thesis. Discussing Great Expectations, it argues that laughter is a plotting force that creates narratives and structures. Finally, the conclusion discusses changes that may have happened to laughter in the nineteenth century and what it means to find ourselves laughing at Dickens’s texts today. 6 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. 7 Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the ‚Copyright‛) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the ‚Intellectual Property‛) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (‚Reproductions‛), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/policies/intellectual-property.pdf), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The University’s policy on presentation of Theses. 8 Acknowledgements Firstly I would like to thank Tracy Walker, without whom, in very many ways, I would not be here