Tamar Yacobi

Tel-Aviv University

Fictional Architecture: The Case of Charles Dickens

Architecture typically functions in literature as the background or location of human activity. For instance, a heroine watches a young man from a tall window, a detective overhears what is said in an adjoining room, a desperate man hides in the cellar or jumps from the roof, etc. "Window," "room," "cellar," or "roof" are frequently the disconnected, verbalized details of an implied architectural space, which remains basically insubstantial. And while some of the buildings that are indicated in this partial manner are recognized as a necessary background, other architectural bits and pieces are perceived as "surplus" details that promote the text's effect of verisimilitude. However, some authors, in deliberately ignoring the dictum of verisimilitude, become architects of the imaginary – if not of the fantastic. As they detail the appearance of their verbal houses, they construct in words distinctively fictional buildings that would fail the basic rules of engineering. (An analogous creation in the visual arts would be René Magritte's strange edifices.) Yet, within the fictive world of the book, these buildings are harmoniously (i.e., metonymically and metaphorically) integrated with plot, character, theme, etc. To illustrate this "fictional architecture" I'll examine its re-presentation in the poetics of Charles Dickens, particularly in the worlds of Bleak House and Little Dorrit. Of special interest are Chesney Wold (the Dedlock's "place" in the country) in the former, and the Clennam house and the Marshalsea prison in the latter. In each case I'll try to demonstrate how the exaggerated or even bizarre features of the (re)presented houses are closely related to the communicative goals of the text.