Dickens, Religion and Society

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Dickens’s Engagement with Religion

   • Robert Butterworth

   Pages 1-25

3. Dickens and Early Victorian Christian Social Attitudes

   • Robert Butterworth

   Pages 26-46

4. Oliver Twist and Fagin’s Jewishness

   • Robert Butterworth

   Pages 47-56

5. Christian Social Vision in the Novels of the 1850s: Bleak House, Hard Times and Little Dorrit

   • Robert Butterworth

   Pages 57-66

6. Bleak House: Law, Religion and Civilisation

   • Robert Butterworth

   Pages 67-94

7. ‘Oh my Friends and Brothers’: Industrialism and Trade Unionism in Hard Times

   • Robert Butterworth

   Pages 95-109

8. Little Dorrit: Serving Mammon

   • Robert Butterworth

   Pages 110-132

9. Dickens and Politics: Temporary and Permanent Revolution

   • Robert Butterworth

   Pages 133-144

10. Barnaby Rudge and the Struggle for Brotherhood

    • Robert Butterworth

    Pages 145-164

11. A Tale of Two Cities and the Persistence of Evil

    • Robert Butterworth

    Pages 165-182

12. A Note on Dickens and Sentimentality

    • Robert Butterworth

    Pages 183-199

13. Conclusion

    • Robert Butterworth

    Pages 200-201

14. Back Matter

    Pages 202-237

    PDF

Dickens, Religion and Society examines the centrality of Dickens's religious attitudes to the social criticism he is famous for, shedding new light in the process on such matters as the presentation of Fagin as a villainous Jew, the hostile portrayal of trade unions in Hard Times and Dickens's sentimentality.

• Charles Dickens
• Victorian era
• Social criticism
• Sentimentality
• Politics
• British and Irish Literature
• religion and society

Robert Butterworth was educated at Farnworth Grammar School and the University of Leeds, and works as a lecturer in North West England. In addition to numerous articles about Dickens, he has published on other Victorian writers including Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hood and George Gissing.

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