The Last and Latest Dickens
Matthew Pearl’s historical thriller The Last Dickens, published in 2009, can be considered as a contemporary reappraisal of Dickens’s unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood and of the last phase of Dickens’s life and literary activity. A brief comparison with Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2012-01-01
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| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/cve/12417 |
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| author | Clotilde De Stasio |
| author_facet | Clotilde De Stasio |
| author_sort | Clotilde De Stasio |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Matthew Pearl’s historical thriller The Last Dickens, published in 2009, can be considered as a contemporary reappraisal of Dickens’s unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood and of the last phase of Dickens’s life and literary activity. A brief comparison with Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini’s re-writing—The D. Case (1989)—reveals a change of perspective, linked to recent trends in criticism and to contemporary topicality. While the Italian writers’ approach was metafictional and parodic, à la Lodge, Pearl’s approach is thematic and biographical, and highly sensational. The central theme is opium and drug addiction—a contemporary obsession: it is an interesting coincidence that an essay by Robert Tracy focusing on this aspect (‘Opium Is the True Hero of the Tale’) was published in the same year as The Last Dickens. As regards Dickens’s life and personality the focus is on the novelist’s frantic effort to assert his vitality and histrionic virtuosity in spite of aging and bad health, as already highlighted by his first biographer and more recently by Peter Ackroyd both in his life of Dickens and in the monologue The Mystery of Charles Dickens. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-98fadba81ced4591a6c91f48351f091b |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2012-01-01 |
| publisher | Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| spelling | doaj-art-98fadba81ced4591a6c91f48351f091b2025-01-30T10:20:59ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492012-01-0110.4000/cve.12417The Last and Latest DickensClotilde De StasioMatthew Pearl’s historical thriller The Last Dickens, published in 2009, can be considered as a contemporary reappraisal of Dickens’s unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood and of the last phase of Dickens’s life and literary activity. A brief comparison with Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini’s re-writing—The D. Case (1989)—reveals a change of perspective, linked to recent trends in criticism and to contemporary topicality. While the Italian writers’ approach was metafictional and parodic, à la Lodge, Pearl’s approach is thematic and biographical, and highly sensational. The central theme is opium and drug addiction—a contemporary obsession: it is an interesting coincidence that an essay by Robert Tracy focusing on this aspect (‘Opium Is the True Hero of the Tale’) was published in the same year as The Last Dickens. As regards Dickens’s life and personality the focus is on the novelist’s frantic effort to assert his vitality and histrionic virtuosity in spite of aging and bad health, as already highlighted by his first biographer and more recently by Peter Ackroyd both in his life of Dickens and in the monologue The Mystery of Charles Dickens.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/12417 |
| spellingShingle | Clotilde De Stasio The Last and Latest Dickens Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| title | The Last and Latest Dickens |
| title_full | The Last and Latest Dickens |
| title_fullStr | The Last and Latest Dickens |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Last and Latest Dickens |
| title_short | The Last and Latest Dickens |
| title_sort | last and latest dickens |
| url | https://journals.openedition.org/cve/12417 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT clotildedestasio thelastandlatestdickens AT clotildedestasio lastandlatestdickens |