Abstract
Shifting the focus of attention from Nell to Trent opens new possibilities of reading Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop. Rather than telling the story of a little child’s journey towards death, the novel is about an old man’s failure to mourn that takes on the aspect of fetishistic disavowal. Trent is a split subject whose phantasmal formations open an abyss between knowledge and belief. His grappling with loss makes him crave for money, a projection which finds its ultimate embodiment in the character of Quilp. Dickens integrates this scenario into a symbolic web centred on the topos of fetishism, which provides the metaphorical medium of the novel while being its central theme. Objects and the subjects’ relation to them are thus placed at the crossroads between an anthropological, a Marxian, and a Freudian conception of fetishism. Dickens weaves his story around the unifying thread between these three facets of the fetishistic paradigm starting from his conception of the latter as a symptom accounting for what is wrong not only with individual lives but also with collective experience. Yet the spear that wounds can also heal, and that is why Dickens’s idea of salutary fetishism as a remedy to the maladies of the self and of society does not undermine his attempt at ‘defetishizing critique’ in The Old Curiosity Shop.
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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Victorian Mages: Robert Browning’s “Pietro of Abano” as a Critical Corollary to Alfred Tennyson’s Merlin
- Of ‘Household Gods’ and Devils: Fetishism in The Old Curiosity Shop
- More than an Artist in the Making: Samuel Beckett’s “Assumption” Revisited
- John Barth and David Foster Wallace: An Abortive Patricide
- False Generosity of the State: Parasitic Subjectivity in J. M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K
- Reviews
- Matti Peikola, Aleksi Mäkilähde, Hanna Salmi, Mari-Liisa Varila and Janne Skaffari (eds.). 2017. Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 37. Turnhout: Brepols, xii+280 pp., 30 illustr., 11 graphs, 9 tables, € 80.00.
- Brandon W. Hawk. 2018. Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 30. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, xvii + 271 pp., 7 figures, $ 65.00.
- Thorlac Turville-Petre. 2018. Description and Narrative in Middle English Alliterative Poetry. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, viii + 222 pp., £ 85.00.
- Susanna Fein (ed.). 2016. The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives. Manuscript Culture in the British Isles. York: York Medieval Press/Woodbridge: Boydell, xi + 253 pp., 6 figures, £ 60.00 (hb)/£ 25.00 (pb).
- Omar Khalaf (ed.). 2017. Alexander and Dindimus. Edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264. Middle English Texts 55. Heidelberg: Winter, liv + 80 pp., 8 plates, 2 tables, € 44.00.
- Traugott Lawler. 2018. The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman. Volume 4: C Passūs 15–19; B Passūs 13–17. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, xv + 499 pp., $ 89.95/£ 69.00.
- Martina Bross. 2017. Versions of Hamlet: Poetic Economy on Page and Stage. Beiträge zur Englischen und Amerikanischen Literatur 35. Paderborn: Schöningh, 354 pp., € 59.00.
- Kathrin Tordasi. 2018. Women by the Waterfront: Modernist (Re)Visions of Gender, Self and Littoral Space. Epistemata: Würzburger Wissenschaftliche Studien – Reihe Literaturwissenschaft 890. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 348 pp., 7 illustr., € 48.00.
- John Kinsella and Russell West-Pavlov. 2018. Temporariness: On the Imperatives of Place. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 372 pp., 37 illustr., € 69.90.
- Colin Wells. 2018. Poetry Wars: Verse and Politics in the American Revolution and Early Republic. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 342 pp, $ 55.00/£ 44.00.
- Christoph Lanzen. 2018. Physicians of Culture: Healing Catharsis in the Fiction of Toni Morrison and the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Heidelberg: Winter, 172 pp., € 35.00.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Victorian Mages: Robert Browning’s “Pietro of Abano” as a Critical Corollary to Alfred Tennyson’s Merlin
- Of ‘Household Gods’ and Devils: Fetishism in The Old Curiosity Shop
- More than an Artist in the Making: Samuel Beckett’s “Assumption” Revisited
- John Barth and David Foster Wallace: An Abortive Patricide
- False Generosity of the State: Parasitic Subjectivity in J. M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K
- Reviews
- Matti Peikola, Aleksi Mäkilähde, Hanna Salmi, Mari-Liisa Varila and Janne Skaffari (eds.). 2017. Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 37. Turnhout: Brepols, xii+280 pp., 30 illustr., 11 graphs, 9 tables, € 80.00.
- Brandon W. Hawk. 2018. Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 30. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, xvii + 271 pp., 7 figures, $ 65.00.
- Thorlac Turville-Petre. 2018. Description and Narrative in Middle English Alliterative Poetry. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, viii + 222 pp., £ 85.00.
- Susanna Fein (ed.). 2016. The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives. Manuscript Culture in the British Isles. York: York Medieval Press/Woodbridge: Boydell, xi + 253 pp., 6 figures, £ 60.00 (hb)/£ 25.00 (pb).
- Omar Khalaf (ed.). 2017. Alexander and Dindimus. Edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264. Middle English Texts 55. Heidelberg: Winter, liv + 80 pp., 8 plates, 2 tables, € 44.00.
- Traugott Lawler. 2018. The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman. Volume 4: C Passūs 15–19; B Passūs 13–17. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, xv + 499 pp., $ 89.95/£ 69.00.
- Martina Bross. 2017. Versions of Hamlet: Poetic Economy on Page and Stage. Beiträge zur Englischen und Amerikanischen Literatur 35. Paderborn: Schöningh, 354 pp., € 59.00.
- Kathrin Tordasi. 2018. Women by the Waterfront: Modernist (Re)Visions of Gender, Self and Littoral Space. Epistemata: Würzburger Wissenschaftliche Studien – Reihe Literaturwissenschaft 890. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 348 pp., 7 illustr., € 48.00.
- John Kinsella and Russell West-Pavlov. 2018. Temporariness: On the Imperatives of Place. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 372 pp., 37 illustr., € 69.90.
- Colin Wells. 2018. Poetry Wars: Verse and Politics in the American Revolution and Early Republic. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 342 pp, $ 55.00/£ 44.00.
- Christoph Lanzen. 2018. Physicians of Culture: Healing Catharsis in the Fiction of Toni Morrison and the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Heidelberg: Winter, 172 pp., € 35.00.