In a recent critical book,

, Alexander Welsh refers to

as being “an impressive work of montage, which ought by now to have earned Dickens the reputation of composing in 1852-53 a distinctly modernist text” (125). This is part of a fairly recent shift in the interpretation of Dickens's work which sees it anticipating the novels of Joyce, Faulkner, Conrad and other major figures in literary modernism. One aspect of this daring originality is the invention by Dickens of what might be called the fictional institution, major examples being

's Court of Chancery and the Circumlocution Office of

. But what Welsh has particularly in mind is the double narrative structure of

in which the…

1996 words

Citation: Smith, Grahame. "Bleak House". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 March 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6297, accessed 26 November 2024.]