Dickens's Villains Melodrama, Character, Popular Culture [Paperback]

This is the first major study of Dickens's villains. They embody, John argues, the crucial fusion between the deviant and theatrical aspects of his writing. Though there have been many studies of both the macabre and the dramatic Dickens, this book sets up a dialogue between these two main strands and suggests a new way understanding the cultural and political implications of his melodramatic aesthetics.

Note on the text
Abbreviations
Introduction
I: Melodrama, Villainy, Acting
1. Intellectual Incorrectness: Melodrama, Populism, Cultural Hierarchies
2. The Villains of Stage Melodrama: Romanticism and the Politics of Character
3. Acting and Ambivalence: Periodical Passions
II: Dickens's Novels
4. Melodramatic Poetics and the Gothic Villain: Interiority, Deviance, Emotion
5. Twisting the Newgate Tale: Popular Culture, Pleasure and the Politics of Genre
6. Dickens and Dandyism: Masking Interiority
7. Byronic Baddies, Melodramatic Anxieties
8. Sincerely Deviant Women
Afterword
Bibliography
Index

This book has many virtues...It is admirably well informed about Dickens's whole oeuvre...The exposition is clear and 'reader friendly,'...And all praise to Oxford University Press for setting the notes, often substantive, at the bottom of the page. The entire production declares, justly, that John's book is a major, original, and potentially long-lasting reconsideration of undervalued dimensions of Dickens's ideology and aesthetics...Dickens's Villainsis one of the freshest interpretations of Dickens in a generation...It is John's signal achievement to demonstrate in this book, both theoretically and historically, the vitalizing theatrical roots of Dickens's popular art and the ways that his characters bring the scattered parts and readers together. --Nineteenth Century Literature

The most exciting study of Dickens for years, brilliantly drawing together approalÓ