English Literature / Unit 15 ENL 1406 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Bleak House and Hard Times
Captions available
The idea
Bleak House, serialized in eighteen fifty-two and fifty-three, centres on Jarndyce and Jarndyce, an endless Chancery suit, and alternates Esther Summerson's narration with an omniscient narrator. Hard Times, of eighteen fifty-four, set in industrial Coketown, attacks Mr Gradgrind's creed of facts.
In practice
The law's delay; the cult of facts.
Where people slip
Bleak House has two narrators.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for English Literature