Dickens, Hogarth and artistic perception: the case of Nicholas Nickleby

This essay considers the interest shared by William Hogarth and Charles Dickens on the idea of instrumentality in the art of realism. Taking his cue from eighteenth-century epistemological philosophy, Hogarth developed an idea of beauty and realism as insisting upon the need for human subjectivity or perspective. Naïve realism was a style that troubled both Hogarth and Dickens and both men developed forms in which caricature, melodrama and exaggeration is crucial to the development of verisimilitude. Considering the progress pieces and the writings of Hogarth as a preface to the style of Dickens, I argue that Nicholas Nickleby developed an extraordinary self-reflexivity. Both Nicholas and his uncle Ralph form part of a narrative study of the implications of filtering perception through the distorting lens of the individual.

Amor intellectualis diaboli

An essay on love and liberty in the writings of Gillian Rose, Marquis de Sade, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, written in response to the following provocation: "Encore un effort. A banderole publicitaire carries the breathless descriptions of the new fashions for 1968, when anything goes and details place the accent on this or that part of the body and its adornment: a pair of shoes that come off in a struggle, for example, the heel of one snapped off; a striking checked shirt, with two buttons undone; a light-coloured trench coat (perfect for a May day); a blouson-style jacket that allows easy freedom of movement; place casual slacks worn with an ankle boot. Beauty is in the streets as fashion becomes democratic (or so say the houses of haute couture), while the philosopher of the boudoir extorts us once again to make an effort if we wish to be republicans. Here, to an assembled crowd of sensitive men and women, which petit-maitre or dangerous man of principles would suggest that the only moral system to reinforce political revolution is that of libertinage, the revenge of nature's course against the aberrations of society?"