The only other character that one might consider as the hero of this novel would, of course, be Steerforth-the Byronic romantic figure, especially in that final, great storm scene-but he really does have certain blemishes, if only his seduction of Little Em' ly and Carlyle who talks about the hero in, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, which is in the endnote to that first sentence, generally gives us idealized figures and, Steerforth, and for that matter, David's undisciplined heart, they do have some warts, some blemishes. Dick, come in and it's not that David disappears, it's that he doesn't have the effect of power that he's had in the first third of the novel. And then other characters, really powerful characters, Betsey Trotwood, Uriah Heep, Micawber, even Mr. And in that respect, it's true that if David Copperfield himself is the obvious hero of his own life, in a way, he sort of dominates very powerfully the childhood section the first years of his life until his mother dies. Now, those words may cohere together into what we call a character. But more recent, if you don't mind getting a bit theoretical, a more recent notion of the novel, or any text, is it's a cluster of words. Just a word about the word hero, or protagonist, or character: they, of course, go all the way back to Aristotle, in The Poetics, who talks about character, plot, and so forth. The famous opening line of the novel, as you all know, is, 'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.' First, the novel itself two, the life of Charles Dickens and three, the reader as the hero of his own life. So, I would like to consider the opening line, which I'd like to consider in three contexts.

As a matter of fact, the very first year I came, I gave a weekend talk on David Copperfield and was sort of looking forward to doing David Copperfield again this summer, but of course, that's not to be. Hello, I'm Gerhard Joseph, I'm a retiree from the City University of New York, and I've been coming to the Dickens Project and the Dickens Universe since the early Eighties. Gerhard Joseph, Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York, asserts that by viewing David Copperfield within the context of the novel, Charles Dickens's life, and within the reader's own life, David Copperfield must, indeed, the hero of his own life.

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