Prof Matthias Bauer (Karls Eberhard University, Tübingen, Germany) and Asst Prof Angelika Zirker (Karls Eberhard University) have each published on the work of Charles Dickens individually, publishing several papers in collaboration. Bauer did his PhD on “David Copperfield” (1850) and has produced a number of articles such as the “Little Dorrit: Dickens and the Language of Things” (1997), focusing on Dickens’s 1857 novel. Most recently, Bauer’s research has investigated the interplay of evidentia, seeing, and poetic intervention in “Bleak House” (1853). Zirker has also published on physiognomy in “Bleak House” and with the ambiguity of truth in the same novel. In this short interview she references her article “‘To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt’: Charles Dickens and the Ambiguous Ghost Story” (2014). Their most recent projects are, firstly, an annotated edition of “The Chimes” (1844), which is linked to their research and peer-learning project TEASys (Tübingen Explanatory Annotations System), and, secondly, a book on “Ambiguous Dickens.” In the latter, they consider Dickens’s novels from the perspective of linguistic, generic, as well as conceptual ambiguity (i.e. the ambiguity of identity).

TEASys: http://www.annotation.es.uni-tuebingen.de/