Dickens's clowns : Charles Dickens, Joseph Grimaldi and the pantomime of life / Jonathan Buckmaster.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Buckmaster, Jonathan, author.

Series:

Edinburgh critical studies in Victorian culture.

Edinburgh critical studies in Victorian culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.

Dickens, Charles.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 220 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2019]

Summary:

Establishes the importance of the popular radical figure of the pantomime clown in the work of Charles DickensThis book reappraises Dickens’s Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi and his imaginative engagement with its principal protagonist. Arguing that the Memoirs should be read as integral to Dickens’s wider creative project on the theatricality of everyday existence, Jonathan Buckmaster analyses how Grimaldi’s clown stepped into many of Dickens’s novels.Dickens’s Clowns presents new readings of Dickens’s treatment of topics such as identity, the grotesque and violence within the context of the tropes of the Regency pantomime. This is the first study to identify the Dickensian clown as a unifying force for several Dickensian themes, overturning traditional views of Dickens’s clowns as peripheral figures.Key FeaturesProvides a new reading of one of Dickens’s most neglected texts, and firmly re-establishes it within the Dickens canon as both part of a wider project alongside his other major works of the period and an important influence on later workIdentifies the pantomime routines of the Regency clown as a key cultural influence on Dickens’s work, tracing significant new sources for his comical treatment of violence and his comedy more generallyOffers important new perspectives on two other key themes in Dickens’s work – the use of food and drink within Dickens’s articulation of the bodily grotesque and Dickens’s use of clothing as a radical signifier of individual liberty

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Series Editor’s Preface

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Chapter 1 Introduction

Part I: Dickens, Grimaldi and the Pantomime Clown

Chapter 2 Pantomime and Pantomime Clowning

Chapter 3 Dickens at the Pantomime

Part II: Dickens and the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi

Chapter 4 The Memoirs as Nineteenth-Century Biography

Chapter 5 George Cruikshank as Co-Biographer of the Memoirs

Part III: The Clown at Large

Chapter 6 The Gluttonous Clown

Chapter 7 The Slapstick Clown

Chapter 8 The Clothed Clown

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4744-0696-3

OCLC:

1306537992