Queering the Dickens narrative: Why Dickensian queer-coding matters to contemporary readers
Nordgren, Adrian
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124432
Description
Title
Queering the Dickens narrative: Why Dickensian queer-coding matters to contemporary readers
Author(s)
Nordgren, Adrian
Issue Date
2024-05-02
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Hoiem, Elizabeth
Department of Study
Information Sciences
Discipline
Library & Information Science
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.S.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
Charles Dickens, queerness, literature, fandom, gender, sexuality
Abstract
This thesis explores the way in which several works by Charles Dickens exhibit themes that are interpreted by contemporary readers as distinctly queer, meaning that the characters and themes therein deviate from a strictly “mythic” heterosexual and cisgender norm. Queering the Dickens Narrative examines the impact this coding has on today’s readers from an autoethnographic standpoint. Dialoguing with the works of prominent queer theorists and narratologists such as Holly Furneaux, Roland Barthes, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and H. Porter Abbott, this thesis makes the claim that Dickens’ actual intention behind his writing matters far less than the reader’s interpretation of that writing and explores the manner by which oppressed and disenfranchised communities within our society regain their power and agency through the very act of reading and interpreting.
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