Eros and Orthography in Bleak House: Aristotelian, Reader-Response, and Narratological Approaches to Jo
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Following its author’s explicit wishes, Dickens’s Bleak House is often read as a protest literature. As ideologically satisfying as propaganda is, this paper begins from an inherent paradox at the heart Dickens’s realism: that in order to make a moral point about the sad state of humanity, the text deploys stock characters. However, as stock characters by definition are not fully realized humans, the political points they make cannot serve a larger moral agenda. This paper, then, seeks to recuperate Bleak House’s most endearing stock character, Jo, by offering a re-evaluation of him through narratology, the scientific study of narrative and reader-response criticism, an approach that authorizes the reader’s role in reacting to a text. This paper offers a new model for the study of narrative, Aristotle’s metaphysics as outlined in two treatises, Metaphysics and On the Soul, models that are essentially and necessarily humane. Ultimately, “Eros and Orthography” offers a metaphysics of Victorian realist literature that recuperates Jo and the text’s social agenda.
Abstract
Following its author’s explicit wishes, Dickens’s Bleak House is often read as a protest literature. As ideologically satisfying as propaganda is, this paper begins from an inherent paradox at the heart Dickens’s realism: that in order to make a moral point about the sad state of humanity, the text deploys stock characters. However, as stock characters by definition are not fully realized humans, the political points they make cannot serve a larger moral agenda. This paper, then, seeks to recuperate Bleak House’s most endearing stock character, Jo, by offering a re-evaluation of him through narratology, the scientific study of narrative and reader-response criticism, an approach that authorizes the reader’s role in reacting to a text. This paper offers a new model for the study of narrative, Aristotle’s metaphysics as outlined in two treatises, Metaphysics and On the Soul, models that are essentially and necessarily humane. Ultimately, “Eros and Orthography” offers a metaphysics of Victorian realist literature that recuperates Jo and the text’s social agenda.
참고문헌 (14)
- Aristotle, "Metaphysics" (1999), The Green Lion Press
- Aristotle, "Nicomachean Ethics" (2002), Focus Philosophical Library
- Aristotle, "On the Soul" (2001), The Green Lion Press
- Blount, Trevor, "Poor Jo, Education, and The Problem of Juvenile Delinquency in Dickens’s Bleak House", Modern Philology, 62(4), pp.325~339 (1965)
- Brooks, Peter, "Reading for the Plot" (1984), Harvard University Press
- Chase, Karen, "Eros and Psyche: The Representation of Personality in Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot" (1984), Methuen, Inc.
- Cummings, Katherine, "Bleak House: Contemporary Critical Essays" (1998), St. Martin’s Press, Inc.
- Dante, Alighieri, "Inferno" (1986), Bantam Classics
- Dickens, Charles, "Bleak House" (2003), Penguin Books
- Fish, Stanley, "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics", New Literary History, 1(2), pp.123~162 (1970)
- Forster, E. M., "Aspects of the Novel" (1954), Harcourt, Brace and Company
- Miller, J. Hillis, "Bleak House: Contemporary Critical Essays" (1998), St. Martin’s Press, Inc
- Prince, Gerald, "A Dictionary of Narratology" (2003), University of Nebraska
- Rosenblatt, Louise, "Literature As Exploration" (1995), Modern Literature Association