LIT 87 — Dickens, the Law, and the Novel of Social Crisis
Quarter: Spring
Instructor(s): William H. Simon
Date(s): Apr 14—Jun 2
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Tuesdays
Grade Restriction: No letter grade
Class Meeting Time: 7:00—8:50 pm (PT)
Tuition: $475
Refund Deadline: Apr 16
Unit(s): 1
Status: Registration opens Feb 23, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Spring
Day: Tuesdays
Duration: 8 weeks
Time: 7:00—8:50 pm (PT)
Date(s): Apr 14—Jun 2
Unit(s): 1
Tuition: $475
Refund Deadline: Apr 16
Instructor(s): William H. Simon
Grade Restriction: No letter grade
Recording Available: No
Status: Registration opens Feb 23, 8:30 am (PT)
Charles Dickens wielded fiction as an instrument of justice, shaping public perceptions of law and morality as forcefully as any barrister or judge. Taught by a Stanford law professor, this course explores Dickens as both cultural critic and legal thinker whose novels mount a searing indictment of Victorian institutions amid rapid social change. We’ll read Bleak House—his greatest “condition of England” novel—in full, while selections from The Pickwick Papers, Little Dorrit, American Notes, and Oliver Twist offer vivid portraits of elections, prisons, bureaucracies, and legal absurdities. Across these works, Dickens dramatizes the human cost of delay, obfuscation, and institutional failure; probes evolving ideas of justice, punishment, and reform; and reveals how fiction grapples with the crises of its age. Alongside literary analysis, we will pursue an ethical and institutional appraisal of Dickens’s social commentary, asking how his morally urgent vision speaks not only to his time but also to ours.
WILLIAM H. SIMON
William W. and Gertrude H. Saunders Professor of Law, Emeritus, Stanford; Arthur Levitt Professor of Law, Emeritus, Columbia
William H. Simon has taught at Stanford since 1981 and at Columbia since 2001, and also at Harvard and UC Berkeley. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Charles Dickens, Bleak House (ISBN 978-0199536313)