The symbol made text: Charles Palliser's postmodernist re-writing of Dickens in The Quincunx

Authors

  • Susana Onega Jaén

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.1993.6.12

Keywords:

Literatura inglesa, Novela, Palliser, Charles, The Quincunx, Dickens, Influencia, Sociedad victoriana, Posmodernismo

Abstract

Early reviewers of The Quincunx (1989) immediately recognised the novel's striking stylistic and thematic indebtedness to Dickens and to other early Victorian writers, a fact that led them to describe Charles Palliser's first novel as a brilliant attempt to reproduce an early Victorian novel. However, closer examination reveals that The Quincunx is not merely a belated imitation of Victorian fiction, but rather a neatly structured, symbolically complex and highly self-conscious parody of it, in line with other contemporary historiographic metafictions, like The French Lieutenant's Woman or The Name of the Rose, and expresses Palliser's own postmodernist world-view.

Funding

The research carried out for the writing of this paper has been financed by the Spanish Ministry of Education (DGICYT, Programa Sectorial de Promoción General del Conocimiento, no. PS90-0117).

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Published

30-11-1993

How to Cite

Onega Jaén, Susana. 1993. “The Symbol Made Text: Charles Palliser’s Postmodernist Re-Writing of Dickens in The Quincunx”. Alicante Journal of English Studies / Revista Alicantina De Estudios Ingleses, no. 6 (November):131-41. https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.1993.6.12.

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Section

Articles