科技媒體看似創新，實際上卻不斷重拾基本人性與感官習慣，人類文明演進因而呈現永恆回歸的螺旋。十九世紀末的電影發明似乎新穎，但實際上卻是利用新技術來重現人們眼中的「自然」。電腦網絡彷彿是嶄新概念；然而虛擬空間卻源自對現實空間的複製、強化與變形。網絡文化日新月異，最後脫穎而出的卻是部落格、影像分享或播客。高度複雜的媒體演化，最後竟整合了各種傳統媒體的特色，並且重拾了最簡單的表達與溝通模式。媒體重建視聽感官，不斷貼近符合自然的環境。 文學創作的演進，也與媒體科技共同演化，而走向「回歸」之路。看似以線性發展的文類，其實不斷環繞著「口語回歸」的中心，以螺旋方式演進。在這樣的螺旋中，經典內容不斷被吸納進入新的媒體，形成文化演進的動力。從戲劇、詩詞到小說，似乎從口語推進至書寫與印刷；但二十世紀的廣播、電影與電視，乃至於電腦網絡，卻將文學重新帶回口語場域。這不禁讓人思考，創新並非進步的真正動力；反倒是新舊混雜、多元流動的媒體整合，才能在跨越文類疆界後，重新尋回最貼近人性的藝術表現形式。 類似的跨文類與媒體整合現象，可從狄更斯作品在不同媒體的流動中見到端倪。狄更斯不但是位傑出的小說家，同時也是出色的演員以及雜誌經營者。他那跨越文類的創作活力，使其作品於媒體演進的過程中，不斷被吸納更新。狄更斯的跨文類網絡提供了一個具體而微的模型，足以檢視媒體整合的歷史演進，以及科技重拾人類自然溝通模式的不同階段。本論文旨在研究狄更斯小說與媒體整合之間的微妙關係，藉此觀察媒體整合感官的進程。論文將分為四大部分。 首先，狄更斯深受劇場傳統影響，而他的小說也經常被改編成為維多利亞通俗劇，這反映了經典內容於書寫（小說）與口語（戲劇）間擺盪的流動性。在小說興起的時代，書寫作品經常被搬上舞台，回歸最直覺的視聽環境，而一般大眾不但熱衷劇場，同時也習慣以劇場經驗來閱讀小說。這種「書寫」與「口語」相互滲透的現象，證明了口語文化的強韌性，也反映出「口語回歸」的趨勢。 其次，狄更斯大眾說書的空前成功，不但說明了觀眾對於視聽表演的熱愛，也暗示著作者試圖從書寫形式外尋求更多創作可能的嘗試。更重要的是，這代表了作者從十九世紀書寫印刷技術回歸吟遊詩人傳統的潛在慾望。透過反覆刪編與練習，狄更斯無須像史詩吟唱者般口頭記頌，而得以藉文字幫助強化表演的變化性與靈活度。透過舞台符號的暗示，狄更斯同時又策略性維護了自身「文化菁英」的形象，在口語與書寫間，取得了策略性的平衡。 第三，狄更斯小說被改編成為電影的過程，顯示了文字被搬上螢幕時所產生的複雜文類互動與媒體間的交互滲透，而作者的敘述技法，則直接影響了許多電影先驅的運鏡與影像語言。攝影機實現了文字藝術所無法表達的事物，然而文字卻馳騁想像，啟發了電影場面調度的概念。本文將觀察狄更斯小說於十九世紀連載時，小說與插圖間的微妙關係，以及小說敘述中的視覺元素，檢視其對於二十世紀電影改編的影響。然而，文字述刺激想像；但電影卻直接將影像呈現於眼前。倘若文字的「留白」是意猶未盡的空間，那麼過於露骨的影像，卻可能剝奪想像的彈性，這是媒體創作必須省思的課題。 最後，本文將研究狄更斯於網際網絡上以不同形式出現的現象，並解讀其在媒體整合中所代表的意義。除提供狄更斯資源的學術網站外，網絡上的電子書與有聲書也同時可見於網絡資源中，甚至許多部落格也提供個人製作的狄更斯改編影片。邇來盛行的「播客」，將數位科技帶往了口語表達的方向，傳統的文字創作開始成為有聲媒體的重要內容，經典作品被數位化、有聲化、影像化，朝更加貼近人性以及自然溝通環境的方向發展。。 狄更斯小說的跨文類網絡提供了一個具體而微的跨媒體網絡模型，透過此模型，我們可以更清楚地觀察媒體整合與演進的歷程，並觀察其不斷回歸的螺懸。近年來文學研究日漸偏向科際整合、媒體整合的文化研究發展，然而也因此不免陷入了自我定義的危機。狄更斯的跨媒體現象足以提供文學研究者一個未來文學與文類發展的可能方向，並於此機械複製的時代，為文學的發展提出可能的解答。 / Media never really innovate; they actually restore the natural balance of human eyesight and earshot with the hybridization of various perceptive elements. For instance, cinema was regarded as an invention in the late nineteenth century, but it only reflected the natural environment people observed with their pre-wired biological perceptions. Cyberspace may appear innovative to us, yet the “Virtual Reality” is still the duplication, amplification or transformation of the nature. The Internet optimists had once dreamt about immense possibilities; the real application of blog, video sharing and podcast, however, merely hybridizes the existent audio and video media. The most sophisticated technologies always aim to approximate the natural mode of human perception, which makes the evolution of media more a spiral that constantly returns to the natural habits than a linear progress into the future. Similarly, literature co-evolves with media to restore the most natural elements — the oral tradition, primary or secondary as it may be, is thus perennial in all literary genres. The evolution seems to advance in a linear pattern; it, nevertheless, revolves around the center of orality and progresses in an anthropotropic spiral, where the classic motifs in various works are sucked and hybridized. Although the canonical transition from drama, poetry to novel sacrifices the natural oral-aural environment to the stable storage in words, the twentieth-century literary representation on radio, film, television and the Internet eventually restore the classic contents in the audio-visual environment. Such a spiral invites us to speculate an essential question: the technological innovation may not be the only dynamic to propel the evolution; instead, it is the restoration of the human-friendly environment that validates the value of the new media. Similar restoration and hybridization can also be observed in the transformation of Charles Dickens’s works into various genres. Dickens is not only an outstanding novelist but also a brilliant performer and an influential magazine entrepreneur. The vitality of his works transcends varieties of literary genres and is absorbed into innumerable modern media as the technology advances. Dickens’s transgeneric network provides a model to observe the transition of media hybridization when the modern technology restores the human natural communication. This dissertation aims to analyze the delicate relationship between Dickens’s novels and the continuous consolidation of human sensory perceptions in various media. My research will be divided into four main categories: First, it will study Dickens’s indebtedness to the tradition of theater and the nineteenth-century melodramatic adaptation of his works to see how the contents of the classic literature oscillate between the pure written form (novels) and the residual of the oral performance (melodrama). The study of such a complicated relationship helps clarify Dickens’s transgeneric metamorphosis profoundly influenced by the social milieu and the mass entertainment in the Victorian period. Second, the success of Dickens’s Public Readings not only epitomizes the audience’s craze for the audio-visual performance but also suggests the author’s endeavors to seek more creative possibilities besides the writing format. More importantly, this singular phenomenon represents the social collective unconsciousness, though repressed by the dominant culture of typography, to return to the ancient tradition of minstrels and bards. Through meticulous editing and intensive rehearsal, Dickens was able to perform with more improvisation and higher accuracy. Furthermore, with a series of symbols onstage, he strategically maintained his identity as a cultural elite and meanwhile enjoyed the ecstasy of orality. Dickens’s unique strategy to reach the equilibrium between orality and literacy will also be analyzed in the dissertation. Third, several film and television adaptations of Dickens’s works will be examined to show the modern transition of his stories from the written genre to the audio-visual media. Dickens directly influenced many cinematic forerunners, and the film fulfills the imagination of the author, which could not be realized on the written page. Furthermore, the cooperation of the novelist and the illustrators in the Victorian magazine serialization will also be analyzed to see how the illustrations inspire the later design of movies on screen. However, the “un-represented” may more often than not be more pregnant with meanings than the explicit representation on screen. Therefore, it will be an important issue to re-consider the meaning of recollecting the natural environment in the literary creation. The final analysis concentrates upon Dickens’s works in the cyberspace, monitoring his afterlife in this cutting-edge medium. Besides the websites that contain the scholarly resources, the old radio clips that recite Dickens’s works and the hypertext reproduction of the novels are all juxtaposed in the virtual space. Moreover, many personal blogs provide their own video adaptations, and the other productions such as the podcast become popular on the Internet. The reincarnation of Dickens’s works in the cyberspace represents the novelist’s unique status as the “cultural modem” that bridges the gaps separation the past, present and future. His works epitomize a clear lineage of the technological transition that endeavors to recollect the most instinctive pattern of human cognition. The transformation of Dickens’s works into so many genres forms a transgeneric network that could help envision the hybridization of media in the literary history. When literature tends to include all media into its field of study, it sometimes undergoes a severe crisis of self-definition. Dickens’s model may provide some clues to envisage the future development of the literary genres in the age of mechanic reproduction.

Victorian serial novels were bound with pages upon pages of advertisements marketing goods to readers, yet the relative inattention paid to this significant material component of the novel is surprising. This project explores the interaction between fictional narrative and commercial advertisements, and aims to recover the material context in which three Victorian novels—Bleak House, Middlemarch, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—were first published and read. These three case studies—a novel published in 20 monthly serial numbers, another packaged in the rare format of eight “books” in bimonthly installments, and the third published in a monthly magazine in three excerpts—are exemplary of a larger phenomenon in Victorian book production wherein fiction and commerce were inextricably bound. This project investigates the ways in which the advertisements can be reconceived as a significant element of the novel, mediating the reader’s experience of the text. The Bleak House chapter examines how the advertisements for hair products in the “Bleak House Advertiser” serve to highlight an aspect of Charles Dickens’s text about Victorian responses to the mass of new consumer goods and individuals’ desire to control the physical aspects of their world. The following chapter considers George Eliot’s (Mary Ann Evans’s) Middlemarch, finding that just as the narrator’s asides compel readers to attend to the temporal difference between the 1830s setting of the novel and the 1870s perspective of the serial edition, sewing machine advertisements in the advertising supplement of the novel serve to remind readers of their role as observers of past events. The examination of Mark Twain’s (Samuel Clemens’s) Huck Finn, as published in three excerpts in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, demonstrates that the magazine articles, the excerpts from Huck Finn, and the advertisements all engage in a project of unifying the nation and alleviating the physical and metaphorical wounds of war. The unity of the message emerges when the excerpts are read together with the many advertisements for wheelchairs and other such implements for disabled bodies. The dissertation ends with a chapter indicating the merits of further analysis and critical discussion of advertisements in the undergraduate literature classroom. / text

This dissertation critically examines why mid-Victorian fiction often dismisses or complicates monetary transactions and monetary charity, even as it negatively portrays differences in social status and wealth. I argue that the novel uses representations of failed charity to reconstruct, however briefly, a non- monetary and non-economic source of value. Further, I examine how the novel uses techniques of both genre and style to predict, form, and critique alternate, non-economic, social models. While tension surrounding the practice of charity arises in the late eighteenth century, the increasing dominance of political economy in public discourse forced Victorian literature to take a strong stance, for reasons of both ethics and genre. This stance is complicated by the eighteenth-century legacy that sees charity as a kind of luxury. If giving to the poor makes us feel good, this logic suggests, surely it isn’t moral. Thus, while much eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature remains dedicated to the ethics of charity, the practice becomes immensely complex. By discussing the works of Tobias Smollett, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and George Eliot, this project exposes a wide variety of responses to this deep cultural anxiety. These authors are, ultimately, strongly invested in redefining the meaning of benevolence as a valid form of social action by moving that benevolence away from monetary gifts and toward abstractly correct moral feelings, though their individual solutions vary widely. / text

The research done in this study was motivated by the notion that individuals (or societies) create their own reality through the specific space they occupy at a certain moment in time. This concept of reality implies an "interspace" between (con)texts that could be described as a hybrid (a term that is used to describe the mixing or intermingling of different aspects or liminal space between various (con)texts. As the notion of identity is closely related to the interaction of the individual with a specific context, the main aim of the research was to promote hybridity as a form of identity by exploring the relationship or dialogue between literature (novel) and film as texts. For this purpose, a comparison was made between the formation of identity in the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and its twentieth century counterpart in film produced by Twentieth Century Fox (directed by Alfonso Cuaron and adapted by Mitch Glazer). The main difference between the two texts, the different periods in which the works were produced, constituted an important point of departure for this study. It also revealed that the main character of the respective texts, Pip/Finn, possesses a type of "core personality" of a sense of values that refuses to be repressed, despite the character's interaction with context as reflected in the interplay between the similarities and differences between the texts. The methodological approach was based on the Brockmeier model which suggested an imbrication of theories such as narratology, semiotics and intertextuality that could all contribute, in some way, towards the formation of "textual" identity. The analysis ,first identified three (con)textual aspects/constants in the formation of identity, namely ideological influences, strategies of writing and social reality, in the novel Great Expectations, and then proceeded to illustrate the transformation of these contextual markers in the twentieth century film version. 'The comparison indicated an expansion of the narrator's/protagonist's historic consciousness in the film that correlated with the cultural dominants of the specific time: the film's realist mode as opposed to the postmodernist expansion or fusion of boundaries. The two texts were perceived to be engaged in a dialogue with no conclusive interpretation, an aspect familiar to the postmodernist approach. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

This dissertation focuses on the triangulated relationship among female sexuality, patriarchy, and empire and examines literary and historical texts to understand how Britons increasingly identified as imperialists over the course of the nineteenth century. This project, the first book-length study of its kind, features analyses of canonical works like Mansfield Park, David Copperfield, and Adam Bede as well as analyses of paintings, etchings, conference proceedings, newspaper advertisements, colonial reports, political tracts, and medical records from Britain and its colonies. I challenge critical conceptions of the fallen woman as a trope of domestic fiction whose position as outcast illustrates the stigmatization of female sex during the nineteenth century, and I argue that the depiction and punishment of fallen women in multiple genres reveal an interest in protecting and maintaining an imperial system that claims moral superiority over the people it colonizes. My critical stance is both feminist and postcolonial, and my work complicates readings of fallen women in Victorian literature while also adding significantly to scholarship on gender and empire begun by Anne McClintock and Philippa Levine. I claim that during the nineteenth century, the fallen woman comes to represent that which will threaten patriarchal and imperial power, and her regulation reveals an intent to purify the British conscience and strengthen the nation’s sense of itself as a moral and exceptional leader in the world. My investigation into fallenness and empire through a wide range of texts underscores the centrality of imperialism to British society and to the lives of Britons living far removed from colonial sites like India or East Africa.

The research done in this study was motivated by the notion that individuals (or societies) create their own reality through the specific space they occupy at a certain moment in time. This concept of reality implies an "interspace" between (con)texts that could be described as a hybrid (a term that is used to describe the mixing or intermingling of different aspects or liminal space between various (con)texts. As the notion of identity is closely related to the interaction of the individual with a specific context, the main aim of the research was to promote hybridity as a form of identity by exploring the relationship or dialogue between literature (novel) and film as texts. For this purpose, a comparison was made between the formation of identity in the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and its twentieth century counterpart in film produced by Twentieth Century Fox (directed by Alfonso Cuaron and adapted by Mitch Glazer). The main difference between the two texts, the different periods in which the works were produced, constituted an important point of departure for this study. It also revealed that the main character of the respective texts, Pip/Finn, possesses a type of "core personality" of a sense of values that refuses to be repressed, despite the character's interaction with context as reflected in the interplay between the similarities and differences between the texts. The methodological approach was based on the Brockmeier model which suggested an imbrication of theories such as narratology, semiotics and intertextuality that could all contribute, in some way, towards the formation of "textual" identity. The analysis ,first identified three (con)textual aspects/constants in the formation of identity, namely ideological influences, strategies of writing and social reality, in the novel Great Expectations, and then proceeded to illustrate the transformation of these contextual markers in the twentieth century film version. 'The comparison indicated an expansion of the narrator's/protagonist's historic consciousness in the film that correlated with the cultural dominants of the specific time: the film's realist mode as opposed to the postmodernist expansion or fusion of boundaries. The two texts were perceived to be engaged in a dialogue with no conclusive interpretation, an aspect familiar to the postmodernist approach. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

在閱覽有關狄更斯的研究的過程中，我發現大多數的學者通常都很有默契的迴避一個事實：狄更斯不但是個名作家，同時也是個成就顯著的表演者。其中只有米勒(Melvin H. Miller)堅稱狄更斯的雙領域成就其實是缺一不可的。 然而米勒的發言並未引起其他學者的注意，即便後來柯林斯(Philip Collins)稍稍提到狄更斯雙領域的關聯，多數學者依舊保持沉默。但我認為柯林斯的論點實在太過草率，所以我轉向昂格(W. J. Ong)的口述理論，希望能藉由昂格的理論發掘狄更斯雙成就的關聯。 一如我所預期，狄更斯有意圖地結合口述傳統與文學性：一方面，狄更斯小說中的口述傳統幫助讀者更快適應新的故事表現方式；另一方面，文字所帶來的抽象思考形成了狄更斯所有作品的架構主幹。最後，狄更斯有意圖地演出他的作品，這三者的結合便使狄更斯能夠隨心所欲地游走在文字及口語表現之中。 接著，費娜根(Ruth Finnegan)的口述理論提醒了我所有文本的功能性的重要。我有點驚訝的發現狄更斯對於口說力量的強烈信仰和世界上其他地方的口語文化不謀而合。藉著費娜根的協助，我指出狄更斯作品中的高度互文性是造成維多利亞大眾無從意識到狄更斯所做的偉大嘗試，也就是試圖結合口述性及文學性。最後，藉著福洛克(Deborah Vlock)的觀點「狄更斯的小說能夠視覺地、口語地、及敘述地被表現」，我相當有信心地作結：狄更斯結合口述性及文學性的意圖正是他深受維多利亞大眾喜愛的主因。 / In reviewing papers related to Charles Dickens, I find that scholars tend to avoid the truth that Dickens is not only a famous writer but a very distinguished performer; only Melvin H. Miller, a contemporary of Dickens, asserts that Dickens’s two careers are indispensible to each other. After Miller’s remarks there’s a long-lasting silence until Philip Collins slightly touches this issue. Yet, not very satisfied with Collins’s hasty judges, I turn to W. J. Ong’s oral theory in order to figure out what is the connection between Dickens’s writing career and speaking achievement. As I expected, Dickens’s writing is a combination of orality and literacy: on the one hand, orality in Dickens’s novels familiarizes the reader with the new style of story-telling; on the other hand, modern consciousness, the product of writing technology, frames Dickens’s texts with logic and lineal thinking. Dickens’s intention to enact his texts finally results in his ability to freely present a text with either written words or spoken words. Later, Ruth Finnegan’s theory reminds me of the significance of functional value of texts. I’m kind of surprised to find that Dickens’s strong belief in oral power is very identical with other oral people’s in the globe. With Finnegan’s great help, I’m encouraged to conclude that it is the intertexuality that makes the Victorian unaware of Dickens’s combining his writing, acting, and speaking. Finally, Deborah Vlock’s remark that Dickens’s novels are “visually, vocally, and narratively written” strengthens my confidence in concluding that the combination of orality and literaty is the secret Dickens’s popularity.

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While the study of Charles Dickens’s religion has produced various results, few would contest that Dickens’s religious views are shaped by his peculiar emphasis on Jesus and the Gospels. As to the precise nature of his views and the degree to which his commitment to the Christian faith extends, however, a much lesser degree of consensus has been established. I attempt to demonstrate here that at the heart of his work is a conspicuous Christian worldview, which is grounded squarely in the imitation of Jesus and which pervades his life and his work in the most profound yet unobtrusive ways. I argue, then, that Dickens’s The Life of Our Lord is a definitive source in the Dickens corpus for our understanding of his Christian thought and worldview. Moreover, as a serious expression of Dickens’s understanding of Christianity, The Life of Our Lord also functions as an index to his Christian thought in the larger Dickens corpus. Of first importance then, I attempt to establish the authority of The Life of Our Lord as a composition that will bear the full weight of such assertions. Then, I analyze its content as to its implicit theology in order to establish not only its thoroughgoing Christian character but also to demonstrate that it reveals Dickens’s own genuine Christian conviction manifested in all his work. Drawing the work to a close, I attempt to demonstrate how The Life of Our Lord helps us to understand Dickens’s churchmanship and his relationship to the church. In the end, I comment on its intended purpose as moral instruction for his children exemplifying his understanding of Christianity. The study demonstrates throughout how the Christianity embodied and articulated in The Life of Our Lord is consistently and naturally reflected in all of Dickens’s work, whether fiction, journalism or correspondence.