Dickens Novels as Verse

Placeholder author icon
By Joseph P. Jordan ’99

Published Jan. 21, 2016

(Farleigh Dickinson University Press) This book of literary criticism argues that Dickens’ novels are, like verse, made up of intricate, largely unnoticeable tissues of alliteration-like patterning, which thread through the work and provide it with coherence. Full of close analyses of passages, it is designed to help all readers grasp why Dickens seems to be a greater writer than the quality of his ideas might lead us to expect. Jordan is a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Paw in print

Image
An inside look up the inside of a building, with four floors and a dinosaur skeleton visible.
The Latest Issue

April 2026

Inside the new ES and SEAS complex; kudos for austerity; jazz at Princeton.