FHS Literary Society: Professor John Mullan on Charles Dickens’s Bleak House
The 2015-2016 programme of Literary Society talks at FHS Sloane Square launched on Tuesday 17th November with a highly engaging lecture by Professor John Mullan on Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. Professor Mullan, Head of English at University College London, a writer on contemporary fiction for The Guardian and a former Man Booker Prize judge, spoke to an audience comprising students, staff and parents on all things Dickensian before considering specific aspects of Bleak House itself. Throughout, Professor Mullan invited us to appreciate the artistry of Dickens’s narrative, including his predilection for cliches, lists and sarcasm, as well as his innovative use of the present tense to reflect a state of being. The original serialisation of Bleak House in monthly instalments was also considered, including Dickens’s use of cliffhanger moments, known as “the curtains”. Dickens’s characterisation and inclusion of caricatures in Bleak House was another focal point, as well as his use of “mems” or notes in his planning the broad arc of the novel. Professor Mullan’s thesis that Dickens is ultimately a fantasist rather than a realist – evidenced by his famous opening to Bleak House in which the reader is invited to imagine a ‘Megalosaurus’ walking up Holborn Hill – gave us all plenty of food for thought in our assessment of Dickens as a writer.
