ENG 498: Senior Seminar: Dickens, Christmas, and Commodification

In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay General Court declared the celebration of Christmas to be a criminal offense. What the Puritans were trying to suppress was a holiday marked by boisterous invasions of the homes of wealthy. As recently as the early 19 century, Christmas reveling often resulted in violence and riots. In this book, Nissenbaum explores the not-always-proud history of Christmas in American culture. 46 illustrations.

Dickens and Mass Culture argues that Dickens's unusual success in combining literary with wider popular appeal is directly related to his sense of himself as a mass cultural artist. The book examines the ways in which his consciousness of a mass market for his work affected both his cultural vision and practice and his post-Victorian afterlives. Dickens's longtime presence on the ten-pound note symbolizes the book's guiding interest in the relationshipbetween the commercial, cultural and political aspects of Dickens's populist vision and legacy. John argues that the aspects of Dickens's art that have underscored critical ambivalence about Dickens - his relations with money, mechanical reproduction and the mass market in particular - have ultimately ensuredboth his iconic cultural status and his centrality to the academic canon.