405Z Fall 2026 Charles Dickens's Bleak House

In this class we'll read Dickens's masterpiece from a variety of perspectives: we'll contextualize it with his life, career as a wildly comic-melodramatic reformist author, editor/publisher of weekly highly influential magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round; the development of the new genre of mystery-detective fiction and his friendship with Wilkie Collins, a fellow practitioner. We'll consider it as a novel published in installments and from the point of view of Phiz's illustrations. We'll read two short stories: the ghost-gothics Signalman and Haunted Man. There are two film adaptations, BBCs serials 1985 (Arthur Hopcraft, Diana Rigg, Denholm Elliot) and 2005 (Andrew Davies, Anna Maxwell Martin, Alun Armstrong), one of which you'll be encouraged to watch as they enrich our experience of the book and make it more enjoyable.

Ellen Moody taught for in senior colleges from 1972-2011 and now over 12 years at two OLLIs. She is a published scholar with specialties in British literature, film, and women's studies. Her most recent publications and talks have been about Anthony Trollope, Jane Austen, and 18th century literature.