科技媒體看似創新，實際上卻不斷重拾基本人性與感官習慣，人類文明演進因而呈現永恆回歸的螺旋。十九世紀末的電影發明似乎新穎，但實際上卻是利用新技術來重現人們眼中的「自然」。電腦網絡彷彿是嶄新概念；然而虛擬空間卻源自對現實空間的複製、強化與變形。網絡文化日新月異，最後脫穎而出的卻是部落格、影像分享或播客。高度複雜的媒體演化，最後竟整合了各種傳統媒體的特色，並且重拾了最簡單的表達與溝通模式。媒體重建視聽感官，不斷貼近符合自然的環境。
文學創作的演進，也與媒體科技共同演化，而走向「回歸」之路。看似以線性發展的文類，其實不斷環繞著「口語回歸」的中心，以螺旋方式演進。在這樣的螺旋中，經典內容不斷被吸納進入新的媒體，形成文化演進的動力。從戲劇、詩詞到小說，似乎從口語推進至書寫與印刷；但二十世紀的廣播、電影與電視，乃至於電腦網絡，卻將文學重新帶回口語場域。這不禁讓人思考，創新並非進步的真正動力；反倒是新舊混雜、多元流動的媒體整合，才能在跨越文類疆界後，重新尋回最貼近人性的藝術表現形式。
類似的跨文類與媒體整合現象，可從狄更斯作品在不同媒體的流動中見到端倪。狄更斯不但是位傑出的小說家，同時也是出色的演員以及雜誌經營者。他那跨越文類的創作活力，使其作品於媒體演進的過程中，不斷被吸納更新。狄更斯的跨文類網絡提供了一個具體而微的模型，足以檢視媒體整合的歷史演進，以及科技重拾人類自然溝通模式的不同階段。本論文旨在研究狄更斯小說與媒體整合之間的微妙關係，藉此觀察媒體整合感官的進程。論文將分為四大部分。
首先，狄更斯深受劇場傳統影響，而他的小說也經常被改編成為維多利亞通俗劇，這反映了經典內容於書寫（小說）與口語（戲劇）間擺盪的流動性。在小說興起的時代，書寫作品經常被搬上舞台，回歸最直覺的視聽環境，而一般大眾不但熱衷劇場，同時也習慣以劇場經驗來閱讀小說。這種「書寫」與「口語」相互滲透的現象，證明了口語文化的強韌性，也反映出「口語回歸」的趨勢。
其次，狄更斯大眾說書的空前成功，不但說明了觀眾對於視聽表演的熱愛，也暗示著作者試圖從書寫形式外尋求更多創作可能的嘗試。更重要的是，這代表了作者從十九世紀書寫印刷技術回歸吟遊詩人傳統的潛在慾望。透過反覆刪編與練習，狄更斯無須像史詩吟唱者般口頭記頌，而得以藉文字幫助強化表演的變化性與靈活度。透過舞台符號的暗示，狄更斯同時又策略性維護了自身「文化菁英」的形象，在口語與書寫間，取得了策略性的平衡。
第三，狄更斯小說被改編成為電影的過程，顯示了文字被搬上螢幕時所產生的複雜文類互動與媒體間的交互滲透，而作者的敘述技法，則直接影響了許多電影先驅的運鏡與影像語言。攝影機實現了文字藝術所無法表達的事物，然而文字卻馳騁想像，啟發了電影場面調度的概念。本文將觀察狄更斯小說於十九世紀連載時，小說與插圖間的微妙關係，以及小說敘述中的視覺元素，檢視其對於二十世紀電影改編的影響。然而，文字述刺激想像；但電影卻直接將影像呈現於眼前。倘若文字的「留白」是意猶未盡的空間，那麼過於露骨的影像，卻可能剝奪想像的彈性，這是媒體創作必須省思的課題。
最後，本文將研究狄更斯於網際網絡上以不同形式出現的現象，並解讀其在媒體整合中所代表的意義。除提供狄更斯資源的學術網站外，網絡上的電子書與有聲書也同時可見於網絡資源中，甚至許多部落格也提供個人製作的狄更斯改編影片。邇來盛行的「播客」，將數位科技帶往了口語表達的方向，傳統的文字創作開始成為有聲媒體的重要內容，經典作品被數位化、有聲化、影像化，朝更加貼近人性以及自然溝通環境的方向發展。。
狄更斯小說的跨文類網絡提供了一個具體而微的跨媒體網絡模型，透過此模型，我們可以更清楚地觀察媒體整合與演進的歷程，並觀察其不斷回歸的螺懸。近年來文學研究日漸偏向科際整合、媒體整合的文化研究發展，然而也因此不免陷入了自我定義的危機。狄更斯的跨媒體現象足以提供文學研究者一個未來文學與文類發展的可能方向，並於此機械複製的時代，為文學的發展提出可能的解答。

Media never really innovate; they actually restore the natural balance of human eyesight and earshot with the hybridization of various perceptive elements. For instance, cinema was regarded as an invention in the late nineteenth century, but it only reflected the natural environment people observed with their pre-wired biological perceptions. Cyberspace may appear innovative to us, yet the “Virtual Reality” is still the duplication, amplification or transformation of the nature. The Internet optimists had once dreamt about immense possibilities; the real application of blog, video sharing and podcast, however, merely hybridizes the existent audio and video media. The most sophisticated technologies always aim to approximate the natural mode of human perception, which makes the evolution of media more a spiral that constantly returns to the natural habits than a linear progress into the future.
Similarly, literature co-evolves with media to restore the most natural elements — the oral tradition, primary or secondary as it may be, is thus perennial in all literary genres. The evolution seems to advance in a linear pattern; it, nevertheless, revolves around the center of orality and progresses in an anthropotropic spiral, where the classic motifs in various works are sucked and hybridized. Although the canonical transition from drama, poetry to novel sacrifices the natural oral-aural environment to the stable storage in words, the twentieth-century literary representation on radio, film, television and the Internet eventually restore the classic contents in the audio-visual environment. Such a spiral invites us to speculate an essential question: the technological innovation may not be the only dynamic to propel the evolution; instead, it is the restoration of the human-friendly environment that validates the value of the new media.
Similar restoration and hybridization can also be observed in the transformation of Charles Dickens’s works into various genres. Dickens is not only an outstanding novelist but also a brilliant performer and an influential magazine entrepreneur. The vitality of his works transcends varieties of literary genres and is absorbed into innumerable modern media as the technology advances. Dickens’s transgeneric network provides a model to observe the transition of media hybridization when the modern technology restores the human natural communication. This dissertation aims to analyze the delicate relationship between Dickens’s novels and the continuous consolidation of human sensory perceptions in various media. My research will be divided into four main categories:
First, it will study Dickens’s indebtedness to the tradition of theater and the nineteenth-century melodramatic adaptation of his works to see how the contents of the classic literature oscillate between the pure written form (novels) and the residual of the oral performance (melodrama). The study of such a complicated relationship helps clarify Dickens’s transgeneric metamorphosis profoundly influenced by the social milieu and the mass entertainment in the Victorian period.
Second, the success of Dickens’s Public Readings not only epitomizes the audience’s craze for the audio-visual performance but also suggests the author’s endeavors to seek more creative possibilities besides the writing format. More importantly, this singular phenomenon represents the social collective unconsciousness, though repressed by the dominant culture of typography, to return to the ancient tradition of minstrels and bards. Through meticulous editing and intensive rehearsal, Dickens was able to perform with more improvisation and higher accuracy. Furthermore, with a series of symbols onstage, he strategically maintained his identity as a cultural elite and meanwhile enjoyed the ecstasy of orality. Dickens’s unique strategy to reach the equilibrium between orality and literacy will also be analyzed in the dissertation.
Third, several film and television adaptations of Dickens’s works will be examined to show the modern transition of his stories from the written genre to the audio-visual media. Dickens directly influenced many cinematic forerunners, and the film fulfills the imagination of the author, which could not be realized on the written page. Furthermore, the cooperation of the novelist and the illustrators in the Victorian magazine serialization will also be analyzed to see how the illustrations inspire the later design of movies on screen. However, the “un-represented” may more often than not be more pregnant with meanings than the explicit representation on screen. Therefore, it will be an important issue to re-consider the meaning of recollecting the natural environment in the literary creation.
The final analysis concentrates upon Dickens’s works in the cyberspace, monitoring his afterlife in this cutting-edge medium. Besides the websites that contain the scholarly resources, the old radio clips that recite Dickens’s works and the hypertext reproduction of the novels are all juxtaposed in the virtual space. Moreover, many personal blogs provide their own video adaptations, and the other productions such as the podcast become popular on the Internet. The reincarnation of Dickens’s works in the cyberspace represents the novelist’s unique status as the “cultural modem” that bridges the gaps separation the past, present and future. His works epitomize a clear lineage of the technological transition that endeavors to recollect the most instinctive pattern of human cognition.
The transformation of Dickens’s works into so many genres forms a transgeneric network that could help envision the hybridization of media in the literary history. When literature tends to include all media into its field of study, it sometimes undergoes a severe crisis of self-definition. Dickens’s model may provide some clues to envisage the future development of the literary genres in the age of mechanic reproduction.