Social Dreaming: Dickens and the Fairy Tale

by Elaine Ostry

Overview

Dickens was known for his incredible imagination and fiery social protest. In Social Dreaming , Elaine Ostry examines how these two qualities are linked through Dickens's use of the fairy tale, a genre that infuses his work. To many Victorians, the fairy tale was not childish: it promoted the imagination and fancy in a materialistic, utilitarian world. It was a way of criticizing society so that everyone could understand. Like Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, Dickens used the fairy tale to promote his ideology. In this first book length study of Dickens's use of the fairy tale as a social tool, Elaine Ostry applies exciting new criticism by Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar, among others, that examines the fairy tale in a socio-historical light to Dickens's major works but also his periodicals-the most popular middle-class publications in Victorian times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415866989
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/21/2013
Series:	Studies in Major Literary Authors
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

William E. Cain, Elaine Ostry

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Nurse’s Stories: Fairy Tales as Cultural Voices; Chapter 2 Frauds on the Fairies: Defending Fancy; Chapter 3 Monsters and Fairies, Homes and Wildernesses; Chapter 4 Dickens’s Christmas “Fairy Tales of Home”; Chapter 5 The Fairy Tale in Dickens’s Periodicals;