Verse Visa: Dickens Adapts Poetry in The Old Curiosity Shop

Abstract

Dickens's frequent adaptations, through the figure of Dick Swiveller, of more or less molested fragments of popular verse, smuggled into the text of "The Old Curiosity Shop" under cover of prose, illuminate both his (and the novel's) ambition to rival poetry in cultural prestige, and Dickens' own counter-tendency to compose in his own right surreptitious blank verse at moments of particularly urgent pathos surrounding the death of little Nell.