Approaches to Teaching Dickens' David Copperfield
Editor(s): Richard J. Dunn
Pages: x & 162 pp.
Published: 1984
ISBN: 9780873524841 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780873524834 (hardcover)
"This book should be a boon for a variety of undergraduate teachers. Recommended."
Choice
The novels of Charles Dickens have attracted a wide and enthusiastic readership since they first appeared in the mid-nineteenth century, and in recent decades their social, biographical, and psychological elements have brought them increasing academic attention. "David Copperfield," writes Richard J. Dunn, "serves not only to introduce Dickens or the novel but also to demonstrate the relations of fiction and autobiography and the roles of myth, archetype, and fantasy in fiction."
This volume, like others in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, "Materials," surveys editions of David Copperfield, background studies on the Victorian milieu, introductions to Dickens, critical and textual commentaries, and other Dickens works. In the second part, "Approaches," sixteen essays explore the many ways teachers present the novel in courses of varied subject emphasis and student experience. Contributors explain the critical assumptions that underlie their choice of David Copperfield and describe their teaching strategies. They show, for example, how they develop a sophisticated response to this universally popular novel; tailor the presentation for particular student levels; play the devil's advocate by introducing common criticisms of the work; and teach the work as a classic of world literature, as a central document of Victorian fiction, or as a combination of fiction and autobiography.
Table of Contents
Approaches to Teaching Dickens' David Copperfield
PART 1: MATERIALS
Richard J. Dunn
Editions
- Required and Recommended Student Reading
- Background on the Victorian Period
- Introductions to Dickens
- Biographical Studies
- Critical and Textual Studies
- Other Dickens Works
Aids to Teaching
- The Instructor's Library
- Reference Works
- Text
- Reception
- Biographies
- Critical Commentary
PART 2: APPROACHES
Introduction
General Discussions
David Copperfield: Different Readers, Different Approaches
Daniel Sheridan
Copperfield on Trial: Meeting the Opposition
Susan J. Hanna
Dickens' Problem Child
Thomas M. Leitch
David Copperfield in a Children's Literature Course
Beverly Lyon Clark
An Introduction to Fiction: David Copperfield in the Genre Course
Margaret Scanlan
The Chords of Memory: Teaching David Copperfield in the Context of World Literature
Willis Konick
Fathers and Sons: David Copperfield in a Course on Victorian Autobiographical Prose
Gerhard Joseph
David Copperfield: An Introduction to a Dickens Course
Stanley Friedman
Specific Approaches
David Copperfield's "Written Memory"
Jean Ferguson Carr
"I have taken with fear and trembling to authorship": David Copperfield in the Composition Classroom
Melissa Sue Kort
David Copperfield: Parallel Reading for Undergraduates
J. Gill Holland
Multum in Parvo: The Ninth Chapter of David Copperfield
George J. Worth
Testing by Installments the "Undisciplined Heart" of David Copperfield's Reader
Michael Lund
Teaching David Copperfield: Language, Psychoanalysis, and Feminism
Dianne F. Sadoff
Making Sense of David Copperfield
Susan R. Horton
David Copperfield and Shared Reader Response
Michael Steig
Appendix
David Copperfield in Installments
Works Cited
Index
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