Unrepresented and “Circumlocuted” People: Public Institutions and Citizens in Dickens’ Little Dorrit
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Giovanna Ligugnana
Giovanna Ligugnana is Associate Professor of Administrative Law in the Department of Law, University of Verona. Her fields of research include administrative justice in national, EU and comparative perspectives; administrative procedure and internal review; environmental law. Her publications include the monographs
Profili evolutivi dell’autotutela amministrativa (Padova: CEDAM, 2004),L’altra giustizia amministrativa. Modelli ed esperienze d’oltremanica (Torino: Giappichelli, 2010), and various essays on the English legal system and administrative justice.
Abstract
Charles Dickens’ novels often present a peculiar vision of the mid-nineteenth-century Victorian government and, more generally, of public administration. In Little Dorrit, the author presents his personal critique of a corrupt, nepotistic and detached bureaucracy that works to maintain itself, stifling citizens’ economic initiative in the process and likewise hindering the development of society. In the same novel, however, the author presents the Marshalsea prison as an unexpected example of ‘domestic’ administration, an official institution that simultaneously punishes and protects, and where, contrary to the other public institutions, the protagonists have really been part of.
About the author
Giovanna Ligugnana is Associate Professor of Administrative Law in the Department of Law, University of Verona. Her fields of research include administrative justice in national, EU and comparative perspectives; administrative procedure and internal review; environmental law. Her publications include the monographs Profili evolutivi dell’autotutela amministrativa (Padova: CEDAM, 2004), L’altra giustizia amministrativa. Modelli ed esperienze d’oltremanica (Torino: Giappichelli, 2010), and various essays on the English legal system and administrative justice.
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus: Articulating the Body Politic: Intersections in Law, Culture, and Society
- The Sex of the Body Politic: Questioning the Legal Constraints on Genderism between Law and Literature
- Shelley’s Mask
- An Uneasy Character: John Calhoun’s Cameos in The Gorgeous Hussy and Amistad
- Unrepresented and “Circumlocuted” People: Public Institutions and Citizens in Dickens’ Little Dorrit
- Representative Government and Constitutional Reality: Spain between Literature and Political Thought
- House of Cards: Comparing the British and the American TV Series from a Constitutional Perspective
- Turning Vanity Fair into The Cœlestial City: England’s Legal Narratives of the Body Politic from Bunyan to Thackeray
- Research
- Justice in Crisis? On the Popular Jurisprudence of Weimar Film
- Is Dr. Frankenstein Still Alive? From Twix to Apple: Commercializing Monstrosity
- Women, Power & the Decline of the West: Richard Sherwin’s Ethical Wisdom, Krzysztof Koslowski’s Tricolor-Red, & Machiavelli’s Mandragola
- The Popularization of Environmental Rights in TED Talks
- Book Review
- Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus: Articulating the Body Politic: Intersections in Law, Culture, and Society
- The Sex of the Body Politic: Questioning the Legal Constraints on Genderism between Law and Literature
- Shelley’s Mask
- An Uneasy Character: John Calhoun’s Cameos in The Gorgeous Hussy and Amistad
- Unrepresented and “Circumlocuted” People: Public Institutions and Citizens in Dickens’ Little Dorrit
- Representative Government and Constitutional Reality: Spain between Literature and Political Thought
- House of Cards: Comparing the British and the American TV Series from a Constitutional Perspective
- Turning Vanity Fair into The Cœlestial City: England’s Legal Narratives of the Body Politic from Bunyan to Thackeray
- Research
- Justice in Crisis? On the Popular Jurisprudence of Weimar Film
- Is Dr. Frankenstein Still Alive? From Twix to Apple: Commercializing Monstrosity
- Women, Power & the Decline of the West: Richard Sherwin’s Ethical Wisdom, Krzysztof Koslowski’s Tricolor-Red, & Machiavelli’s Mandragola
- The Popularization of Environmental Rights in TED Talks
- Book Review
- Book Review
