Ohio State University Press
Dickens's Forensic Realism: Truth, Bodies, Evidence
Key Metrics
- Andrew Mangham
- Ohio State University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780814213247
- 9.2 X 6.3 X 0.8 inches
- 1.15 pounds
- Literary Criticism > English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
As Mangham shows, forensic medicine grew out of a perceived need to understand things with accuracy, leaning in part on the range of objectivities that inspired the inorganic sciences. At the same time, it had the burden of assisting the law in convicting the guilty and in exonerating the innocent. Practitioners of forensic medicine were uniquely mindful of unwanted variables such as human error and the vagaries of interpretation. In readings of Oliver Twist, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House, The Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations, and Dickens's early journalism, Mangham demonstrates that these questions about signification, perception, and reality are central to the stylistic complexities and playful tone often associated with Dickens. Moreover, the medico-legal context of Dickens's fiction illuminates the richness and profundity, style and impact of Dicken's narratives.
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