In this course, we will be reading two of Charles Dickens’ most unusual novels, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. The first novel is partly historical and is set in Revolutionary France; the second is not historical and is set in the England of Dickens’ own time. But both novels have to do, as is the case with almost everything that Dickens wrote, with the coming to life of a human soul, a soul that had been dead or dying. In other words, both are steeped in a vision of the world that Dickens has taken from the gospels and applied to the issues of his time.