Charles Dickens' London and the eighteenth-century tradition of realism

This article focuses on Charles Dickens' early collection of London texts, Sketches by Boz, more specifically on the self-presentation of its narrator, who adopts the roles both of flaneur and social critic, and on his relationship to the city. In the course of my analysis, a number of textual strategies will be uncovered that produce the effect of authenticity and that are geared towards placing the author in the tradition of literary realism. The most important of these strategies is Dickens' recourse to a powerful literary precedent: Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and the qualities of a competent and trustworthy author detailed in the poetological chapters of his novel, which serve as a model for the narrator of the Sketches.