New Zeitgeist Tapes: Election Special - The Pickwick Papers Election

Steve forced me to read Dickens. So I talked about Emmerdale. But the way all fiction covers politics does set the tone for coverage and attitudes.

This month it’s another election special! Emma and Steve discuss the chapter about the election in Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. 

Listen here: https://audioboom.com/posts/8517683-the-pickwick-papers-election

Those who know me (and especially those who studied with me) will know that I tried to read the whole book once and gave up halfway through with a lifelong aversion to Dickens. But here we talk about the interesting  - and interestingly negative – way that the election is presented and the similarities with practically all depictions of politics ever since. 

You can read The Pickwick Papers here (we are covering Chapter XIII) https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/580/pg580-images.html#link2HCH0013

Steve’s essay which informed this episode is here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/2041-9066.12084