Christmas Carols: remediations of Charles Dickens’s tale

This paper investigates two contemporary reworkings of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in the light of Bolter and Grusin’s theory of remediation (1999). More specifically, the aim of the present study is to propose a reading of two ‘new’ Carols, both of which appeared in Italy in 2012, and which exemplify, remarkably, the double logic of remediation. One is a graphic tale by the Disney artist Guido Martina entitled Il Canto di Natale; the other is a theatre play, Prima chi molta sia…salvami tue Nadale (Save me before Christmas comes), written in the dialect of Bosa (Sardinia), and staged by a local amateur company. New versions of Dickens’s work were produced in 2012 in connection with the bicentenary of the writer’s birth that year. The occasion revived significant public and critical interest into anything Dickensian, also contributing to a better understanding of Dickens’s place in Western contemporary culture. Accordingly, the two works analysed here reflect and testify to the legacy of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and to this author’s contribution to a vision of literature as a peculiarly versatile and always remediative form of art.