Tuesday 29 September 2009
Fagin as Pimp
In Monday's class, Megan (I think it was) mentioned 'a long critical essay' she had read that talked about the sexual, prostitutory subtext of Fagin's den, though she couldn't remember the specifics. I wonder if it was this paper by Larry Wolff, '"The Boys Are Pickpockets, and the Girl Is a Prostitute": Gender and Juvenile Criminality in Early Victorian England from Oliver Twist to London Labour', New Literary History (27:2 Spring, 1996), 227-249. That's a link to the JSTOR version of the essay; I'd be interested to know what you all think of it, and may set 'write a 500 word response to this paper' as one of the non-assessed tasks for this term.
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Hello Adam,
ReplyDeleteI'm having trouble getting hold of the Oxford Reader's Companion, but the Cambridge Companion also looks really good, and it's free online. What do you think of it?
Hey Alice,
ReplyDeleteThe Oxford Reader is now usefully out of print, but they have a few copies in the library. The Cambridge is apparently really hard and not very useful. The great thing about the Oxford is it's a 'Dickens Dictionary', so to speak, so if you find a key word repeated in any of the novels, or a key theme, character etc, then you can just look it up, so probably worth buying.
Hi Charlotte: I'm with Alice, and prefer the Oxford (and not only because I was an advisory editor for that project). I'll see if I can scratch up any copies.
ReplyDeleteI think you got us mixed up there Adam...
ReplyDeleteYep! But thanks anyway. I thought I'd been making mistakes when I couldn't get it! I will look at this dictionary though, sounds good.
ReplyDeleteOops! Sorry. I tell you what: to save my face, how about you two change your names by deed poll to 'Alice' and 'Charlotte' respectively ...?
ReplyDeleteThat's quite funny....although I don't think I'd have time for deed polls on top of all this work! So much to do. See you soon.
ReplyDelete