The Worship of Childlike Innocence: Dickensian Realm of Community
by Li Jing
About This Novel
This monograph is the first in academic circles to use the worship of childlike innocence as a carrier to gain a glimpse of the community imagination in Dickens's 14 completed novels. The Victorians, who were in a period of civilizational transition, had stepped out of the Tönnies-style kinship community and been thrown into a society of strangers born out of industrialized division of labor. When shaping the nation-state, Dickens created a community narrative system that eliminated class exclusivity through the structural repetition of the worship of childlike innocence-the age inversion of precocious children and immature adults, fantasy landscapes, and the promotion of good and punishment of evil. The pursuit of the highest good in melodramatic aesthetics highlights the profound significance of social trust built by virtue to economic ecology.
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