‘Only Brooks of Sheffield’: Conversation, Crossover Writing, and Child and Adult Perspectives in David Copperfield and Its Juvenile Adaptations

This article examines the role that conversations between children and adults play in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850), and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century adaptations of it for a child audience. First, I show conversation as an important vector in Dickens’s exploration of chi...

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Main Author: Hannah Field
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2020-12-01
Series:Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/cve/7998
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author Hannah Field
author_facet Hannah Field
author_sort Hannah Field
collection DOAJ
description This article examines the role that conversations between children and adults play in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850), and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century adaptations of it for a child audience. First, I show conversation as an important vector in Dickens’s exploration of child and adult knowledge in the original novel. The rules of conversation are suspended in mixed-age companies, as is most powerfully expressed in my titular example: an adult joke turning on the child David’s non-comprehension of a remark by Mr Murdstone. Nonetheless, other conversations show sensitive adults mitigating power differentials between child and adult, and present the child David as unusually perspicacious (in line with his overall characterization). Second, I turn to juvenile adaptations of David Copperfield by writers including Dickens’s granddaughter Mary Angela Dickens. I argue that these works minimize not just the number of conversations in direct speech, but also the process by which David makes conversational inferences; the (now third-person) narrator often fills conversational gaps for the child reader. In the final section, I argue that the relative unimportance of conversation in the adaptations, as opposed to Dickens’s novel, cannot be attributed to concerns with suitability or intelligibility alone. Instead, Dickens’s preoccupation with conversations between adults and children relates to David Copperfield’s original status as a crossover or cross-written text that would have been read by a mixed-age audience. Once this dual address is removed in the adaptations, age-levelled knowledge positions are of much less concern. As such, conversation in David Copperfield metaphorizes the labour (and ethical responsibilities) of the cross-writer.
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spelling doaj-art-202fcd1f59964cf18f8402403820ff562025-01-30T10:22:18ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492020-12-019210.4000/cve.7998‘Only Brooks of Sheffield’: Conversation, Crossover Writing, and Child and Adult Perspectives in David Copperfield and Its Juvenile AdaptationsHannah FieldThis article examines the role that conversations between children and adults play in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850), and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century adaptations of it for a child audience. First, I show conversation as an important vector in Dickens’s exploration of child and adult knowledge in the original novel. The rules of conversation are suspended in mixed-age companies, as is most powerfully expressed in my titular example: an adult joke turning on the child David’s non-comprehension of a remark by Mr Murdstone. Nonetheless, other conversations show sensitive adults mitigating power differentials between child and adult, and present the child David as unusually perspicacious (in line with his overall characterization). Second, I turn to juvenile adaptations of David Copperfield by writers including Dickens’s granddaughter Mary Angela Dickens. I argue that these works minimize not just the number of conversations in direct speech, but also the process by which David makes conversational inferences; the (now third-person) narrator often fills conversational gaps for the child reader. In the final section, I argue that the relative unimportance of conversation in the adaptations, as opposed to Dickens’s novel, cannot be attributed to concerns with suitability or intelligibility alone. Instead, Dickens’s preoccupation with conversations between adults and children relates to David Copperfield’s original status as a crossover or cross-written text that would have been read by a mixed-age audience. Once this dual address is removed in the adaptations, age-levelled knowledge positions are of much less concern. As such, conversation in David Copperfield metaphorizes the labour (and ethical responsibilities) of the cross-writer.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/7998Dickens (Charles)David Copperfieldcross-writingadaptation studiesconversation
spellingShingle Hannah Field
‘Only Brooks of Sheffield’: Conversation, Crossover Writing, and Child and Adult Perspectives in David Copperfield and Its Juvenile Adaptations
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Dickens (Charles)
David Copperfield
cross-writing
adaptation studies
conversation
title ‘Only Brooks of Sheffield’: Conversation, Crossover Writing, and Child and Adult Perspectives in David Copperfield and Its Juvenile Adaptations
title_full ‘Only Brooks of Sheffield’: Conversation, Crossover Writing, and Child and Adult Perspectives in David Copperfield and Its Juvenile Adaptations
title_fullStr ‘Only Brooks of Sheffield’: Conversation, Crossover Writing, and Child and Adult Perspectives in David Copperfield and Its Juvenile Adaptations
title_full_unstemmed ‘Only Brooks of Sheffield’: Conversation, Crossover Writing, and Child and Adult Perspectives in David Copperfield and Its Juvenile Adaptations
title_short ‘Only Brooks of Sheffield’: Conversation, Crossover Writing, and Child and Adult Perspectives in David Copperfield and Its Juvenile Adaptations
title_sort only brooks of sheffield conversation crossover writing and child and adult perspectives in david copperfield and its juvenile adaptations
topic Dickens (Charles)
David Copperfield
cross-writing
adaptation studies
conversation
url https://journals.openedition.org/cve/7998
work_keys_str_mv AT hannahfield onlybrooksofsheffieldconversationcrossoverwritingandchildandadultperspectivesindavidcopperfieldanditsjuvenileadaptations