Dickens Nicholas Nickleby and the Dance of Death

Jeremy Tambling

"Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, and the Dance of Death explores ways in which Dickens draws on medieval and baroque traditions in how he analyses death and its grotesquerie, especially drawing on the visual tradition of the 'dance of death' which is referred to here and which is prevalent throughout Dickens's novels. It shows these traditions to be at the heart of London, and aims to illuminate a strand within Dickens's thinking from first to last. Drawing on the critical theory of Walter Benjamin, Freud, Nietzsche and Marx, and with close detailed readings of such well-known figures as Mrs Nickleby, Vincent Crummles and his theatrical troupe, and Mr Mantalini, and attention to Dickens's description, imagery, irony, and sense of the singular, this book is a major study which will help in the revaluation of Dickens's early novels"--