Dickens, Irving, and the American “Logocracy”

• Published in: Dickens studies annual 2016-01, Vol.47, p.1-16
• Main Author: Nancy Aycock Metz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American culture; American literature; Discourse; Linguistics; Literary history; Periodicals; Political debate; Political discourse; Satire; Slavery
• ISSN: 0084-9812; 2167-8510

Focusing on the years surrounding Dickens's first American journey, this essay looks at Dickens's engagement with the concept of American society as a “logocracy,” or government by words. The term was given prominence in Washington Irving's Salmagundi (1807–08) and afterwards widely circulated in American newspaper and periodical literature. Dickens's representation of the New World both evokes and explores this paradigm of an American logocracy, viewing language as symptom and cause of a deep and uniquely American malaise. But Dickens offers a bleaker and more pessimistic interpretation than Irving's. Where Irving saw hope in the respect accorded to a special class of orator/leader, Dickens laments the disappearance from public service of the entire leadership class. Where Irving emphasized the emptiness of verbal posturing, threats, and “windy war,” Dickens, in American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit sees an inevitable relationship between violent words and violent acts exacerbated by a dangerous conflation of written and oral forms of discourse. Most importantly, where Irving' satire rhetorically erased the issue of slavery, Dickens moves the issue front and center. In these significant ways Dickens reshaped the discourse about “logocracy,” filtering it through the bitterness of his own disillusionment and bringing it forward into a political era that posed new dangers and challenges.