Solutions

[Don Richard] Cox has di­vid­ed the ma­te­ri­al on lit­er­ary crit­i­cism and anal­y­sis into two sec­tions — one from 1871 to 1939, the other from 1940 to 1997. This di­vi­sion, Cox ex­plains in his pref­ace, “re­flect[s] the gen­er­al­ly ac­knowl­edged shift in Dick­ens stud­ies that comes with Ed­mund Wil­son’s [1940] ar­ti­cle, “Dick­ens: The Two Scrooges”. Be­fore the pub­li­ca­tion of Wil­son’s ar­ti­cle, Cox re­minds us, the focus of most schol­ar­ship and de­bate was on find­ing a so­lu­tion to the “mys­tery”. Cox as­serts that Wil­son’s ar­ti­cle goes be­yond this nar­row focus and “stress­es the im­por­tance of this novel to our un­der­stand­ing of Dick­ens and his work”. Fur­ther­more, Cox uses this di­vi­sion in dates to em­pha­size an­oth­er major change in Dick­ens schol­ar­ship — “the chang­ing of the guard” that in­evitably oc­curred as fore­most schol­ars of the ear­li­er era passed away, and new schol­ars with new in­sights came to the fore­front.

Linda P. Pridgen, “The “Jaded Traveller”

1871 - 1939

1940 - up to now

Walters's table of solutions