This paper explores the narrative of London's urban space in Dickens' works, pointing out that current research often analyzes it from a realistic perspective and fails to fully explore the richness of Dickens' style London. Wolfers provided new ideas for Dickens' urban studies from a phenomenological perspective, but did not delve into the generation path of his phenomenological presentation. This article regards Dickens' London as a product of phenomenological narration, focusing on analyzing the interaction between Dickens' life space and textual urban space, as well as the logic behind it. It reveals how Dickens created a way of expressing urban space beyond epistemological certainty through the encoding of subject memory and experience.

The semi omniscient urban observer and the perception of London

Explored how Charles Dickens created a unique urban observer perspective by combining panoramic gaze and pedestrian ground perception, thus shaping the urban narrative of London. Dickens' narrative combines a panoramic view from the sky with the experience of ground wanderers, showcasing the urban significance of London's combination of reality and imagination. He interpreted more content through fragmented maintenance, acknowledging the more important significance that lies beyond what can be expressed. Dickens' panoramic view of London allows for the rewriting of urban space through the personal trajectories or fragments of city walkers' movements, constructing a modern city with dreams, memories, or allegorical mechanisms as key opening points. Dickens portrayed himself as an "urban detective", using all sensory experiences to interpret urban spaces as multidimensional as possible, and organizing different urban spaces to construct a "city story" in the process of enjoying the roaming style of urban life. The London in Dickens' text is not the "real London" in history, but rather a product of the latter's experiential inspiration. Once transcribed and encoded through perception, the differences between the two London can be revealed. Dickens expressed the diversity and complexity of London by presenting it as a series of phenomena, while such London also portrays the widespread anxiety of individuals trapped in the city's "maze" through a "phantom" image.

Maze City and Mirror London

In Dickens' novels, "prohibition of passage" and "loss" are key words to understand his narrative of London's urban space. 'No Entry' symbolizes urban mazes and systemic functional blockades, while 'Lost' implies widespread homelessness and identity anxiety. Dickens expressed the volatility of character identity through symbols such as clothing changes, and death became an extreme form of ending homelessness. Dickens regarded 'loss' as an essential urban state, closely related to his traumatic childhood experiences in London. He uses a spatial transfer strategy to transform personal experiences into virtual substitutes in the text, forming a mirror relationship. The prison imagery is ubiquitous in Dickens' writing, reflecting his profound depiction of the impact of imprisonment on both the physical and mental well-being of individuals. Dickens' urban narrative does not follow the law of continuous development, but rather promotes the mutual infiltration of individuals and urban events based on the perception of event relationships. The prison experience, memory space, and imagination space form a dynamic tension relationship, and Dickens' narrative redefines subjectivity in a mirrored virtual world. Dickens explores the urban modernity of London through the perception of locality, expanding the breadth of textual space through spatial transfer in mirrors. The mirror effect often occurs in key plot points of Dickens' novels, reflecting his sustained efforts towards urban phenomena.

History 'Star Cluster' and 'Memory of London'

Dickens' London narrative breaks through a single time frame and historical unity through the commemorative presentation of traumatic memories, integrating the past and present to create a complex perception of time. The city is depicted as a 'monad' that accommodates both pre - and post history, presenting images of London at multiple time scales, forming a new way of examining urban modernity. At the beginning of "Bleak House," modern London is placed in a "folded time" through time reorganization, showcasing the fusion of the past, present, and future. Dickens' focus on London's' pre history 'is in line with the combination of social observation and antique interest in 19th century urban close ups. The railway, as a symbol of urban modernization in the Victorian era, is also an important image for Dickens to explore how the past can be rediscovered in modern times. The railway visualizes the ruins like past of the city in 'The Dongbei Father and Son', while pointing towards the future, metaphorically representing a modern London urban space that blends progress and primitiveness, past and future. Dickens established the concept of the present through the historical star cluster, allowing traumatic memories from the heart to enter the current perspective and bringing out the obscured past. He regards the past as a virtual space, presenting it as a hidden foundation of modernity in the reshaping of memory forms, proving how the narrative subject relies on past memories to ensure the effectiveness of perception of external space. The textual space confuses essence and chance, phenomenon and experience, and the city is built on "sensibility". The narrative subject is lost in the reproduction of multiple meanings of specific locations.