Mapping Europe in Little Dorrit

This study aims at showing the European spatial structure of Little Dorrit. It thus aims at qualifying the view of a Dickens quintessentially “English”and drawing on London as his main source of inspiration. Therefore, it also singles out LD in the canon. The European frame of reference is then seen as specifically oriented along a north-south axis, with England and Italy at its extremes, joined in a relationship of opposition and similarity. Italy works in a narrative strategy bent on decentering London, and on undermining key-assumtions of bourgeois ideology