This 2013 NeMLA panel invites abstracts for papers exploring the power of Dickens to delineate character. A famous critical crux divided earlier readers into those, like Chesterton, finding Dickensian characters archetypal and mythic, and those, like Lewes, finding them two-dimensional and mechanical. 15-minute papers wrestling with this crux by either by referencing Freudian psychoanalysis, Jungian myth-criticism, or other approaches are welcome. Send 1-page abstracts towilliam.moeck@ncc.edu, along with institutional affiliation and contact info by 30 September 2012. More about the 2013 Northeast Modern Language Association conference can be found at www.nemla.org