La revisione del romantico. Dickens e il paradigma amoroso in 'Little Dorrit'

In this paper we shall examine the relationship between Dickens and Romanticism, with specific reference to Little Dorrit (1855-1857), one of the great novels of the writer’s late period. On the one side, Dickens is still within the Romantic cultural frame; on the other, he is keen on satirically distancing himself from the Byronic cultural aftermath, implicitly sensing – together with Carlyle – a radical historical change. We shall focus on the wide range of love relationships portrayed in the novel, rather than on the plurality of themes with deeper social implications, such as those of the prison, the role of finance, the aristocracy, the Circumlocution Office. The love between the protagonists Clennam and Amy Dorrit is shown as true romance in its very connections with the bourgeois values. The bourgeois medietas is in fact attained only through auto-analytical release of the subject from ingrained emotional constraints, and through the various exempla given by the wide range of love relations in which the protagonists are personally involved or which they can experience as witnesses (Gowan and Pet Meagles, Clennam and Flora, Amy and Chivery, Wade and Tattycoram). In this perspective Byron and Wordsworth are the main voices in relation to which the Romantic theme in the novel is articulated. Finally, the regenerating power of Clennam and Amy Dorrit’s love is seen not so much in connection with the natural world, but with the new and problematic milieu of the modern metropolis.