A Wisdom of the Head and a Wisdom of the Heart: Dickens, Disney, and Popular Culture

Abstract: Only by recognizing that Dickens’s novels not only teach us a great deal about Victorian England, but also about our lives in the here and now, can we remain vibrantly one of Dickens’s “publics.” We must transcend the usual “wisdom of the head,” the traditional academic study of his novels, and connect with the “wisdom of the heart” as well, the meaningful student-centred ways that his texts resonate in actual everyday lives – pedagogical advice that Dickens himself famously proffered in Hard Times . In my recent course, “Dickens, Disney, and Popular Culture,” my students and I did just that, discovering both Dickens, and his continuing influence on our lives, together during a memorable semester.