Dickens Quarterly

Abstract:

This article examines the representation of the flâneur in Dickens's two journals, Household Words and All the Year Round. It specifically considers the named figure itself, in part to restore some definitional clarity to a term that is often used loosely, and in such a variety of ways that it has begun to "seem hollow," in the words of one historian of the concept. This named version of the flâneur as it appears in the journals is a satiric one, harkening back to the popular sketch journalism of the 1830s and 1840s with its emphasis on humorous urban stereotypes, painted with broad strokes, and usually treated with gentle mockery. Perhaps the most immediate inspiration for Dickens's journals, though, is the comic persona known as "the London Idler," which was popularized in a series of "chapters" published in Punch in late 1842.