Hard Times: An Introduction To The Variety Of Criticism (the Critics Debate)

All references to Hard Times are to the Penguin edition, edited by David Craig (Harmondsworth, 1969), and are given in square brackets. References to secondary material appear in parentheses with date of publication on the introduction of each such work. Fuller details may then be found in the bibliography where secondary works are listed in alphabetical order.My thanks are due to Alcuin Blamires and Elsie Reynolds for early encouragement, and to Peter Miles who, as ever, acted above and beyond the call of duty that one can reasonably expect from a busy colleague. I must also thank Monica Norden who produced the typescript from my execrable handwriting. Her calm patience was matched only by that of Mike Scott and of the editorial staff at Macmillan who treated this errant author so sympathetically. "Hard Times" is possibly one of the least liked of Dickens's novels, but one of the most read. Its imaging of Victorian schoolroom, industrial squalor, and complacent hypocrisy in a society choking in a Utilitarian ethos has provided us with a graphic and enduring portrait of 19th century England. Yet the novel's critical history has been a controversial one. Whilst acknowledging that the novel is insufficiently focussed in its critique of society, Allen Samuels argues that the underlying issues raised in the novel are still presciently with us, in particular the debate within the text of the place of fiction in a society increasingly dominated by scientific fact. The author surveys a range of 19th and 20th century critical views of the novel pointing to them as expressions of social and moral viewpoints ultimately concerned with value. Attention is thus paid to those critics, such as Ruskin, Shaw, Wilson, Orwell, Leavis who have thought of literature as more than the merely academic. Their concern with moral and political value is contrasted with more Formalist criticism, textual scholarship and with historical readings. Recent theoretical approaches are lightly sketched in an analysis of a deconstructionist reading the text. In his appraisal Allen Samuels argues that we dislodge Leavis's categorization of "moral fable" and replace it with dramatic satire. Pointing briefly to Dickens's theatrical qualities, he then considers how the satire may be interpreted so as to reveal the connections between selfishness and "writing" in a materialist society. Analogies of writing and reading are explored and analyzed. An epilogue queries the nature of "Victorian values" in contemporary discourse, and wonders how "Hard Times" might provide a comment on our own age. Possibly the least liked of Dickens's novels, Hard Times has generated considerable critical disagreement, usually not for what it is about, but for how good it is. Allen Samuels considers the critical views of several 19th and 20th century critics to show how they have responded in their various ways to this question. Believing that ultimately the question of value is a dead duck, he offers his own interpretation in which he considers how the novel dramatizes within itself the competing rivalry of the literary and sociological imaginations. He focusses on three key critical areas: the novel's genre, the metaphors of reading within the text, and the theme of self-interest as characterised by Bitzer's success. Provides a review of Dickens' novel "Hard Times". The author looks at the social and political situation of the Victorian era recorded in this book and examines the impact of the novel's critical history. Also looked at is the place of fiction in a society increasingly dominated by scientific fact. Front Matter....Pages 1-10 Introduction....Pages 11-16 Survey....Pages 17-58 Appraisal....Pages 59-94 Back Matter....Pages 95-99