Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities

by Harold Bloom

This series provides comprehensive reading and study guides for some of the world's most important literary masterpieces.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.

Reviews

[Jesse Field · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often take the various Bloom's critical volumes down from the shelf and examine them, but rarely read one through. The Guides series are mercifully short, and to the point, and I was so puzzled by A Tale of Two Cities that this proved an invaluable companion as I plunged through the chapters. There is a brief comment by Harold Bloom (literary criticism may be a small industry, but it has its titan) followed by a useful little "Story behind the Story" essay -- Dickens adapts some of the elements of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution using a plot structure from a play the author acted in, "The Frozen Deep." The love triangle ending in a suitor's sacrifice to his rival perhaps captured the drama-besotted Dickens as the greatest melodrama that could be told. (What Bloom cites as Dickens' "stage fire" could be interpreted as a sense for "memes" that promote "altruism," using the terms of Richard Dawkins.)

Then follows a useful summary (I'd have been bogged down in Book II without this, and as it is I have a map for additional reading). And then, snippets of critical essays, where other Bloom volumes contain whole essays. In very short order, our eyes are opened to the range of views on this thought-provoking work: most critics both celebrate the book's ability to embed the domestic melodrama into the grand historical narrative, and vice versa, but at the same interrogate the swings and symmetries, the flashes of polemic, and the ideological ambiguities. Sidney Carton's sacrifice preserves liberal individualism and manifests the revolutionary ideals at once. Dickens exaggerated the horrors of French aristocracy, and masked the benefits of 18th century institutions. His portraits of France are generally clumsy and unfair, and yet belie his love of French sentimentality. They also leave a deeper impression on us than any of the scenes set in England -- the blood-drinking crowd, the tumbrils parading the streets, and Madame Defarge, Revolution personified as femme fatale, Mother purged of all pity and tenderness.

Readers love Sidney Carton, and have little feeling for Charles Darnay: We want to believe that heroes lurk within us, not that we're on the run from guilt. Liberal individualism must wrestle with the Master-Slave logic first outlined by Hegel: by standing up to fight the power, the crowd overcomes its own humanity, and this paves the path to self-destruction.

Of course, this sort of guide is meant only as a starting point. But any reader who enjoyed the novel along with only one other work of criticism, could hardly go wrong than selecting such a concise anthology.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did some research on a Tale of Two Cities as I read it without a class. Some of them were better than others.

Catherine Gallagher's The Duplicity of Doubling in A Tale of Two Cities is awesome. It explored historical issues regarding executions. She did a lot of research. It was fascinating.

Other good ones are
-Alter's Demons of History
-Marcus' Carylean Vision
--Charles Darnay and Revolutionary Identity.

Bloom's article was weak. Too much psychology.

It's possible better criticism has taken place now. The study guide seems pithier. Catherine Gallagher's article is the best in it.