Dickens's Idiomatic Imagination offers an original analysis of how Charles Dickens's use of "low" and "slangular" (his neologism) language allowed him to express and develop his most sophisticated ideas. Using a hybrid of digital (distant) and analogue (close) reading methodologies, Peter J. Capuano considers Dickens's use of bodily idioms—"right-hand man," "shoulder to the wheel," "nose to the grindstone"—against the broader lexical backdrop of the nineteenth century.

Dickens was famously drawn to the vernacular language of London's streets, but this book is the first to call attention to how he employed phrases that embody actions, ideas, and social relations for specific narrative and thematic purposes. Focusing on the mid- to late career novels Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend, Capuano demonstrates how Dickens came to relish using common idioms in uncommon ways and the possibilities they opened up for artistic expression. Dickens's Idiomatic Imagination establishes a unique framework within the social history of language alteration in nineteenth-century Britain for rethinking Dickens's literary trajectory and its impact on the vocabularies of generations of novelists, critics, and speakers of English.

Peter J. Capuano is Associate Professor of English and a Faculty Fellow in the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) at the University of Nebraska. He is the author of Changing Hands.

A tremendous book which sheds prismatic light on Dickens's unique and idiomatic language of the body. Demonstrating rather than asserting Dickens's linguistic singularity in ways that few works do, Capuano deftly integrates critical theory, digital humanities, and historically informed close reading to illuminate Dickens's inimitable ability to use the ordinary to convey the extraordinary. A must read.

William A. Cohen, author of Embodied:

In anatomizing Dickens's bodily idioms, Capuano combs the digital evidence with one hand while weaving ingenious interpretations with the other, modeling an elegant methodology for literary criticism today.

John O. Jordan, author of Supposing Bleak House:

Dickens's Idiomatic Imagination is an impressive work of literary research and analysis. Bringing together 'distant' and 'close' readings, Peter J. Capuano makes a significant contribution to scholarship on Dickens, especially to understanding and appreciating his extraordinary linguistic versatility and use of idiomatic and vernacular language.