Fiction and cyberspace: reading Dickens in the information age

The article investigates a few characteristics of Dickensian textuality and the voices of Victorian culture as possible anticipations of today's discourses and texts. It focuses on elements of continuity and elements of disruption in the migration from the Victorian novel to digital culture, while new myths and narratives are constantly forged out of old forms. If the Victorian world view has declined forever, some traits of its culture, retraceable in Dickens's world, are endowed with impressive dynamism and sound surprisingly contemporary: from an altered urban experience and emerging visual culture to the play with multiple identities, an increased sense of speed and mobility and a different apprehension of time. Ultimately, the article challenges an essentialist view of literary classics by claiming that classics are, in a sense, what we make and constantly remake of them.