The Shop in Dickens’s Fiction

All Dickens readers can easily agree that the presence of shops in his work is very striking, ranging from four “Scenes” in Sketches by Boz to better known examples like the eponymous place in The Old Curiosity Shop, Sol Gills’s store of nautical instruments in Dombey and Son, Krook’s warehouse in B...

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Main Author: Maria Teresa CHIALANT
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA) 2016-06-01
Series:E-REA
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/erea/4931
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author Maria Teresa CHIALANT
author_facet Maria Teresa CHIALANT
author_sort Maria Teresa CHIALANT
collection DOAJ
description All Dickens readers can easily agree that the presence of shops in his work is very striking, ranging from four “Scenes” in Sketches by Boz to better known examples like the eponymous place in The Old Curiosity Shop, Sol Gills’s store of nautical instruments in Dombey and Son, Krook’s warehouse in Bleak House and Mr. Venus’s laboratory in Our Mutual Friend to Household Words. Considering that shops are either buildings and rooms where goods and services are sold, or spaces stocked with merchandise for sale, the present article looks at the latter of these functions in Dickens’s fiction; its aim is twofold: to draw attention to their recurrence as containers of objects—which gives him the opportunity to satisfy his obsession with the naming of things and to adopt the stylistic device of the list—and to explore the homology between the shop and the page as an example of Dickens’s rhetoric of “excess.”
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issn 1638-1718
language English
publishDate 2016-06-01
publisher Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)
record_format Article
series E-REA
spelling doaj-art-bf25f03987af40e99a262cccd77f33172025-01-09T12:54:53ZengLaboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)E-REA1638-17182016-06-0113210.4000/erea.4931The Shop in Dickens’s FictionMaria Teresa CHIALANTAll Dickens readers can easily agree that the presence of shops in his work is very striking, ranging from four “Scenes” in Sketches by Boz to better known examples like the eponymous place in The Old Curiosity Shop, Sol Gills’s store of nautical instruments in Dombey and Son, Krook’s warehouse in Bleak House and Mr. Venus’s laboratory in Our Mutual Friend to Household Words. Considering that shops are either buildings and rooms where goods and services are sold, or spaces stocked with merchandise for sale, the present article looks at the latter of these functions in Dickens’s fiction; its aim is twofold: to draw attention to their recurrence as containers of objects—which gives him the opportunity to satisfy his obsession with the naming of things and to adopt the stylistic device of the list—and to explore the homology between the shop and the page as an example of Dickens’s rhetoric of “excess.”https://journals.openedition.org/erea/4931Charles Dickenslistthing and commodity cultureGreat ExhibitionVictorian London
spellingShingle Maria Teresa CHIALANT
The Shop in Dickens’s Fiction
E-REA
Charles Dickens
list
thing and commodity culture
Great Exhibition
Victorian London
title The Shop in Dickens’s Fiction
title_full The Shop in Dickens’s Fiction
title_fullStr The Shop in Dickens’s Fiction
title_full_unstemmed The Shop in Dickens’s Fiction
title_short The Shop in Dickens’s Fiction
title_sort shop in dickens s fiction
topic Charles Dickens
list
thing and commodity culture
Great Exhibition
Victorian London
url https://journals.openedition.org/erea/4931
work_keys_str_mv AT mariateresachialant theshopindickenssfiction
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