Charles Dickens is one of Britain’s most enduringly popular authors, his work regularly forming the basis for a myriad TV costume dramas and generations of schoolchildren being examined on the plot and themes of Great Expectations and David Copperfield.
However, Dickens’s popularity extends far beyond the English speaking world and his novels have been translated into countless languages, including Italian, French, German, Finnish, Chinese, Korean, Urdu, Russian, Japanese and Spanish, amongst many others.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of this imaginative writer’s birth, and the people of Jávea are eager to join in the celebrations. The months of October and November will be dedicated to a number of events guaranteed to attract anyone with even the most casual interest in this much loved author, whose own life has been dissected almost as much as the plots and characters of his remarkable novels.
The celebrations will begin with a lecture entitled ‘An Introduction to Dickens’, given by Professor Michael Hollington, an international authority on the subject of Charles Dickens, his life, times and novels. Although the talk will be offered in English, Professor Hollington has prepared a PowerPoint presentation in Castellano, which will be shown concurrently, allowing Spanish speaking participants to keep up with all the salient points.
In addition, the Jávea Book Circle is collaborating with the Jávea Players and local schoolchildren to bring Oliver Twist, possibly Dickens’s best known and most loved work, to life. This event will run in tandem with ‘What The Dickens?’ a light-hearted theatre evening of entertainment with extracts of the author’s novels and songs, which will take place between the 16th and the 20th of October.
Jávea’s Casa de Cultura will also be involved in the autumn’s lively appreciation of this very English man by showing filmed adaptations of Dickens’s novels on Thursday evenings during October and November. Lectures entitled ‘Dickens: Writer of Thrillers’ in Castellano and ‘The Private Side of Dickens’ in English will also take place during this time.
More information about Jávea’s Dickens extravaganza can be obtained from the Town Hall and the tourist offices located in the town centre, the port and Arenal beach.
