Story Telling

About the lecture

In this module, we think about the idea of storytelling in A Christmas Carol, focusing in particular on: (i) the length of the novel (or novella?) and how long it takes to read, and why this is important; (ii) the 'character' of the narrator in the novel, and his (or her?) informal, conversational style ("I mean to say", "I tell you", "I say", etc.); (iii) the idea of Dickens' bringing dead language back to life in the same way as dead people are brought back to life in his narrative ("Marley was dead: to begin with"); and (iv) the idea that Dickens wrote to be read out loud, and the reports of his own performances of the text in the mid-19th century ("The two thousand and odd people were like one, and their enthusiasm was something awful").

About the lecturer

Professor John Mullan holds the Lord Northcliffe Chair of Modern English Literature at University College, London. He is a specialist in eighteenth-century literature, currently writing the 1709-1784 volume of the Oxford English Literary History. Most recently he is the author of How Novels Work (2006), Anonymity: A Secret History of English Literature (2008) and What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved (2012). A broadcaster and journalist as well as an academic, he writes a weekly column on contemporary fiction for the Guardian.