This post has been contributed by Bethan Carney and Carolyn Gonzalez

At the tail end of July 2018, in a blistering heatwave,  more than 80Dickens Society members converged on the picturesque town of Tübingen, Germany for the 23^rd Annual Dickens Society Symposium. Travelling from all corners of the world were attendees of assorted ages and backgrounds: academics, students, independent scholars and other Dickens devotees. This was the first time the symposium had been held in Germany and it was a truly delightful location.  

Our host, the University of Tübingen, is one of Germany’s oldest universities founded in 1477. The streets of Tübingen’s Altstadt (old town) wind in a charming welter of cobbles, half-timbered buildings, canals and verdant hanging baskets. Hölderlin’s Tower was swathed in scaffolding, but much of the remainder of the medieval city looked as it might have done for hundreds of years before Dickens was born, although he was not lucky enough to see it.

The ‘larks’ embraced a wealth of stimulating papers, a reception at Schloss Hohentübingen, perched high above the town, and an excursion to a fascinating instance of nineteenth-century Gothic Revival architecture– Schloss Lichtenstein. The welcome could not have been warmer nor more Dickensianly convivial.

Monday, July 30

Monday kicked off with welcome remarks from Natalie McKnight, President of the Dickens Society, and Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker on behalf of our hosts. Leon Litvack also introduced his photographic exhibition ‘Dickens in the Eye of the Beholder’ which was on show in the University Library. This was well worth a visit – Dickens was very aware of his visual image and employed professional photographers to present him in a variety of poses. Some were conventional, depicting status, wealth and masculine authority, others portrayed him as a family man at home, working at his desk or standing at his specially designed reading lectern.

Hugo Bowles got Panel A on ‘Digital Dickens’ off to a flying start with a paper exploring Dickens’s use of Gurney’s shorthand system, ‘the devil’s handwriting’ as Dickens called it. This system had symbols for consonants but not vowels – so the real test was trying to read back from the notation. Bowles argued that using the Gurney system may have influenced Dickens’s writing, such as in the scene in The Haunted Man when Master Adolphus entertains himself by substituting vowels in his calls for people to buy their morning paper, pepper, pipper, popper, and pupper.

The remainder of the panel showcased useful digital tools. Angelika Zirker and Miriam Lahrsow presented TEASys (Tübingen Explanatory Annotations System), a system enabling digital text annotation on three different levels (from basic to more advanced information) and walked us through it, using The Chimes. Michaela Mahlberg demonstrated CLiCDickens, an exciting corpus stylistics project, in a paper on the body in Dickens. Researchers can use the web app to search the full text or parts of Dickens’s novels. Searches can pinpoint similarities across and between books, such as character associations and common words and phrases.

Simultaneously, Panel B on ‘Confusion, Infection, and Duration’ was starting with Anne Rüggemeier’s paper on Dickens’s portrayal of illness. She examined Dickens’s representation of suffering and how an abundance of descriptors shapes our reading of illness. Robert Sirabian considered Dickens’s detailed descriptions, too, but focussed on language and time. Finally, Francesca Orestano drew attention to A Holiday Romance, a little-discussed work, and its dialogical complexities.

After the coffee break we had parallel seminars – a new format with five or six presenters on each panel giving short papers of seven minutes each. The participants had shared their work in advance to facilitate discussion. Both ‘Dickens and Difference’ and ‘Meaning through Language’ offered a space for upcoming scholars and graduate students to exchange ideas and answer audience questions.

Christian Dickinson’s paper on The Old Curiosity Shop highlighted how Dick Swiveller’s character and language develop concurrently and Rebecca Ehrhardt made fascinating claims about how pronouns fail John Harmon. Carolyn Gonzalez argued that Dickens’s calls for more empathetic teachers and students in Our Mutual Friend were warnings against mechanization. The numerous forms of haunting used by Dickens encourage the reader to see death as an enlightening state according to Katherine J. Kim. Suyin Olguin directed attention to linguistic devices surrounding food in A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations and she drew connections with Victorian nutritional science. The seminar wrapped up with Akiko Takei’s work on the language of facts and falsehoods in Hard Times and the impossibility of controlling emotion and imagination.

The afternoon’s ‘Figures of Speech’ panel opened with Zelma Catalan drawing attention to the ‘headline’-style opening of Bleak House. Diverting us from Bleak House’s Megalosaurus to other mighty creatures, Michelle Allen-Emerson then used CLiC Dickens to trace elephant references, finding forty-five across Dickens’s novels. Lastly, Annette Frederico’s evocative paper on the visits Pip and the reader make to Satis House touched on some smaller organisms – including the insects in Satis House and the ‘spider’ Drummle.

Meanwhile, on ‘Speaking the Same Language’, Bethan Carney drew connections between various German fairy tales and A Christmas Carol before Sara Malton’s intriguingly entitled paper, ‘Ever to Wonder?’, examined Emma Donoghue’s engagement with Dickens in her novel The Wonder (2016). The politics of language fascinated Megan Beech, as she argued that Dickens edited out explicitly political rhetoric when he adapted his texts for public readings.

Session IV on Monday afternoon gave the choice between a publication workshop and a panel of papers on ‘Women’s Words’. The workshop offered helpful advice from David Paroissien (editor of Dickens Quarterly), Natalie McKnight (editorial board of Dickens Studies Annual) and Michaela Mahlberg (editor of International Journal of Corpus Linguistics).

‘Women’s Words’ comprised three insightful papers on Dickens’s portrayal of women. Megan Hansen directed our attention to Esther’s ‘visible facts’, pointing out that in Bleak House, women mostly ‘peep’ whilst men ‘stare’. Stacey Kikendall focused on Amy Dorrit’s ‘public body’ and her management of others’ visual perceptions of her. And Ciarunji Chesaina gave the last paper of the day on the fascinating overlaps between African gender cultures and representations of womanhood in Great Expectations.

Monday ended with a reception at the wonderful Schloss Hohentübingen. High on a hill with fabulous views over the city, we enjoyed a glass or two of wine and delicious canapés amongst a collection of plaster casts of classical statues. 

Tuesday, July 31

Day 2 began bright and early with Panel A on ‘Speaking the Self’. Katherine Charles’s paper was on Dickens’s portrayal in photographs and self-portraits. Julia Kuehn then located David Copperfield in the generic tradition of bildungsroman, whilst arguing that the novel does not follow the traditional model of ‘undisciplined’ to ‘disciplined’ heart. To wrap up this panel, Lillian Nayder threw new light on the relationship between Dickens and his brother, Fred. The brothers shared a language of style but just couldn’t see eye to eye on many issues.

Over at Panel B, participants were ‘Stepping Outside to Talk’. There was more digital Dickens as Hoyeol Kim used word frequencies to analyse the language of emotion in Dickens’s novels. Move over Bella and Rokesmith! Mr and Mrs Boffin turn out to be the most frequently mentioned characters in Our Mutual Friend.

Eike Kronshage reflected on Dickens’s attitude to physiognomics and argued that Dickens distrusted theories that looked at static body parts rather than dynamic body language. And the theme of facial communication was continued by Céline Prest (one of the winners of the Partlow Prize), who read Rosa Dartle’s scar as a ‘scarlet letter’ proclaiming Steerforth’s violation and linking body to psyche.   

During the annual meeting there was a discussion about the present and future direction of the Society, in particular its ‘5-year plan’, and about potential formats and locations for the Symposium.

Following a caffeine boost, Panel A (‘Mutual Interests’) reconvened to contemplate Our Mutual Friend. Elizabeth Bridgham opened with a paper on how (indecent) marriage proposals shape the unfolding of plot. Next, Emma Curry looked at Dickens’s fascination with legs, arguing their stylistic significance as language, legs, and feelings are intricately connected as an organizational force. Finally, Sean Grass spoke ‘In Defense of Bradley Headstone’, contending that Headstone is flawed but not as heinous as he may initially seem.

Panel B, meanwhile, investigated ‘Signs, Afterlives, Ontology’. Jeffrey Jackson explored the relationship between Barnaby Rudge’s Maypole and Dickens’s readers, arguing that the sign of the Maypole represented an older, pictographic culture which was displaced by increased literacy, as indicated by the ultimate destruction of the pub.

Jeremy Parrott’s paper exposed the afterlife of Dolly Varden. Cakes, fashions, a fish, a mountain in Colorado and Covent Garden market (in cockney rhyming slang) are all named after her. But what prompted this fascination? We learnt it originated in a craze started by a picture of Dolly by W. P. Frith. Owned by Dickens, it was auctioned on his death for 1000 guineas. The ensuing publicity kick-started the trend. The panel closed with Magdalena Pypeć’s discussion of the Imperial Gothic of Edwin Drood.

Early Tuesday afternoon, conference participants climbed aboard a couple of coaches for the excursion to Schloss Lichtenstein. One can only imagine what Dickens would have made of this beautiful, peculiar, Victorian folly. Inspired by Wilhelm Hauff’s novel Lichtenstein (1826), Count Wilhelm of Württemberg built this Romantic neo-Gothic confection on the foundations of a ruined medieval castle. Its position, 250 meters above the valley, grants visitors spectacular views from the windows of the Armoury – a room with an impressive collection of medieval weapons and suits of armour. Other rooms include a chapel (complete with fifteenth-century alter paintings), a drinking parlour (with toasting-pulpit and a champagne flute as tall as Count Wilhelm) and a grand hall for dinner parties.

The excursion culminated with the Dickens Dinner at Forellenhof Rössle, a hotel famous for its trout, which reputation turned out to be fully deserved. Natalie McKnight offered opening remarks at the dinner, graciously thanking our hosts and announcing the Partlow Prize winners. This year the society opted for two winners. Kylee-Anne Hingston was a recipient for her essay entitled ‘Bleak House’s Body Language: Articulating Disability through Narrative Form’. Céline Prest also received the award for her essay ‘“And then I saw it start forth like the old writing on the wall”: Rosa Dartle’s Scar as Linguistic Weapon’.

Wednesday, August 1

Day 3! Whilst Panel A continued the theme of ‘Digital Dickens’, starting with Diana Archibald and a corpus linguistics analysis of Dickens’s travel writing, over on Panel B Rob Jacklosky scrutinized the dark comedy, grounded in shame and class anxiety, of Great Expectations.  Dickens’s letters were comic, too, as Osamu Imahayashi highlighted when he used them to demonstrate differences between Dickens’s private and professional use of language. The final paper on the ‘digital’ panel was given by Susan Cook and Liz Henley, relating a student project using Makerspace technology (collaborative workspaces) to represent Great Expectations visually.

Meanwhile, Nancy Metz placed Pickwick Papers’ ‘Madman’s Manuscript’ in the context of debates about lunacy – at the intersection of nineteenth-century legal, medical and scientificdiscourses. Catherine Quirk followed madness with melodrama, classifying Dombey and Son as a theatrical novel in which Edith Dombey performs the character of the fallen woman.

Conceptualizations of sympathy linked papers by Pamela Gilbert, Dominic Rainsford and Melissa Jenkins. Rainsford highlighted how Dickens uses tricks of language to bring characters ‘to life’ who then exert a claim on the reader’s sympathies. Gilbert traced two models of emotional connection in Dickens’s novels: sympathy and contagious sentiment. Finally, Jenkins suggested that Dickens used the language of nature to delineate difference and the limits of sympathetic identification.  

Two papers reflected on reflections: the mirrored space of Dickens’s Swiss Chalet (Margaret Darby) and The Old Curiosity Shop’s waxworks (Daniel Tyler). On the same panel, Matthias Bauer and Nicole Poppe traced the journey to understanding followed by Dickens’s protagonists, the mutual understanding Dickens claimed he sought with his readers and the way his texts withhold understanding.

We pondered prose. Joel Brattin confronted Dickens’s cursing, Bert Hornback rocked to Dickens’s rhythms and Michael Hollington dwelt on Dickens’s ‘London’. And we deliberated disability. Galia Benziman examined two Dickensian doctors with divergent attitudes to linguistic signs, Strong and Marigold. Lydia Craig spoke of how emotional connection is not impaired by sensory disability in ‘Doctor Marigold’. And Kylee-Anne Hingston (a Partlow Prize winner) outlined the articulations of the disabled body in Bleak House.

The final panels of the conference were on periodical culture and performance. Jeremy Parrott and Leon Litvack both spoke about authorship in All The Year Round, with Parrott’s momentous find of the complete bound set annotated with article authors’ names providing a wealth of exciting insights. It was surely a conference highlight to learn that one previously unknown contributor to the journal also fenced stolen gold!

The conference was over all too quickly, and we went our separate ways home – but with our thoughts already turning to #Dickens2019 in Salt Lake City.