English 12 - Mr. RinkaLesson #42

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

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Charles Dickenshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens (February 7, 1812 – June 9,1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian Period. During his life,

his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular. Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens left school to work in a factory after his father was thrown into debtors' prison. Although he

had little formal education, his early impoverishment drove him to succeed. Over his career he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, 5 novellas and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights,

education, and other social reforms. Dickens sprang to fame with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humor, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly installments,

pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. The installment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress

at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens went on to improve the character with positive lineaments. Fagin in Oliver Twist apparently mirrors the famous fence Ikey Solomon; His caricature of Leigh Hunt in the figure of Mr. Skimpole in Bleak House was likewise toned down on advice from

some of his friends as they read episodes. In the same novel, both Lawrence Boythorne and Mooney the beadle are drawn from real life – Boythorne from Walter Savage Landor and Mooney from 'Looney', a beadle at Salisbury Square. His plots were carefully constructed, and Dickens often wove in elements from topical events into his narratives.

Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, is one of the most influential works ever written, and it remains popular and

continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. His creative genius has been praised by fellow writers —from Leo Tolstoy to G. K. Chesterton and George Orwell—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterizations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of

psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism.

Literary Stylehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Literary_style

Dickens loved the style of the 18th century picaresque novels which he found in abundance on his father's shelves. (Picaresque is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which might sometimes be satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of

a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Literary_style

His writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity. Satire, flourishing in his gift for caricature, is his forte. An early reviewer compared him to William Hogarth for his keen practical sense of the ludicrous side of life though his

acclaimed mastery of varieties of class idiom may in fact mirror the conventions of contemporary popular theatre. Dickens worked intensively on developing arresting names for his characters that would reverberate with associations for his readers and assist the development of motifs in the storyline giving what one critic calls an "allegorical

impetus" to the novels' meanings. To cite one of numerous examples, the name Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield conjures up twin allusions to "murder" and stony coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator"—are often

popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats, or dinner-party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy. The author worked closely with his illustrators, supplying them with a summary of the work at the outset and thus ensuring that his characters and settings were exactly how he

envisioned them. He would brief the illustrator on plans for each month's installment so that work could begin before he wrote them. Marcus Stone, illustrator of Our Mutual Friend, recalled that the author was always "ready to describe down to the minutest details the personal characteristics, and ... life-history of the creations of his fancy."

Charactershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Literary_style

Dickens's biographer Claire Tomalin regards him as the greatest creator of character in English fiction after Shakespeare. Dickensian characters, especially so because of their typically whimsical names, are amongst the most memorable in English

literature. The likes of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley, Bob Cratchit, Oliver Twist, The Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sikes, Pip, Miss Havisham, Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay, David Copperfield, Mr. Micawber, Abel Magwitch, Daniel Quilp, Samuel Pickwick, Wackford Squeers, and Uriah Heep are so well known as to be part and parcel of

British culture, and in some cases have passed into ordinary language: a scrooge, for example, is a miser. His characters were often so memorable that they took on a life of their own outside his books. Gamp became a slang expression for an umbrella from the character Mrs. Gamp and Pickwickian,

Pecksniffian, and Gradgrind all entered dictionaries due to Dickens's original portraits of such characters who were quixotic, hypocritical, or vapidly factual. Many were drawn from real life: Mrs. Nickleby is based on his mother, though she didn't recognize herself in the portrait, just as Mr. Micawber is constructed from aspects of his

father's 'rhetorical exuberance': Harold Skimpole in Bleak House, is based on James Henry Leigh Hunt: his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognized herself in Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield. Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his meeting with Hans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep.

Virginia Woolf maintained that "we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens" as he produces "characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks.” One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London

itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the Thames, all aspects of the capital are described over the course of his body of work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Dickens2.jpg

Dickens in London

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Social Commentaryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Literary_style

The Dickens novel was, among other things, a work of social commentary. He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. In a New York address, he expressed his belief that, "Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she

does in purple and fine linen". Dickens's second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime: it destroyed middle class polemics about criminals making any pretense to ignorance about what poverty entailed impossible.

Literary Techniqueshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Literary_style

Dickens is often described as using 'idealized' characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his caricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals. The story of Nell Trent in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) was received as extraordinarily moving by contemporary readers

but viewed as ludicrously sentimental by some critics. The question as to whether Charles Dickens belongs to the tradition of the sentimental novel is debatable. Valerie Purton in her recent Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition, sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his "sentimental scenes and characters

[are] as crucial to the overall power of the novels as his darker or comic figures and scenes", and that "Dombey and Son is [ ... ] Dickens's greatest triumph in the sentimentalist tradition". However, the Encyclopædia Britannica online comments, that despite "patches of emotional excess", such as the reported death of Tiny Tim in A

Christmas Carol (1843), "Dickens cannot really be termed a sentimental novelist". In Oliver Twist, Dickens provides readers with an idealized portrait of a boy so inherently and unrealistically 'good' that his values are never subverted by either brutal orphanages or coerced involvement in a gang of young pickpockets.

While later novels also center on idealized characters (Esther Summerson in Bleak House and Amy Dorrit in Little Dorrit), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant social commentary. Many of his novels are concerned with social realism, focusing on mechanisms of social control that direct people's lives (for instance, factory networks in Hard Times and

hypocritical exclusionary class codes in Our Mutual Friend). Dickens reflected what he believed to be true of his own life, making frequent use of coincidence, either for comic effect or to emphasize the idea of providence. Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost nephew of the upper-class family that randomly rescues him from the dangers

of the pickpocket group. Such coincidences are a staple of 18th-century picaresque novels, such as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, that Dickens enjoyed reading as a youth.

Assignment #1

We will be reading a Christmas Carol, but we will study the following four novels: A Christmas CarolOliver TwistDavid CopperfieldA Tale of Two Cities

Assignment #1

So, I am including all of them with this lesson in case you wish to explore them as well. Take some time to sample them.

A Christmas Carol

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm

http://librivox.org/a-christmas-carol-dramatic-reading-by-charles-dickens/

LA 12 A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/730/730-h/730-h.htm

http://librivox.org/oliver-twist-by-charles-dickens/

LA 12 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

David Copperfield

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/766/766-h/766-h.htm

http://librivox.org/david-copperfield-by-charles-dickens/

LA 12 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

A Tale of Two Cities

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/98/98-h/98-h.htm

http://librivox.org/a-tale-of-two-cities-by-charles-dickens/

LA 12 A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Assignment #2

Begin reading A Christmas Carol. You will have 4 lessons to complete this reading assignment.

English 12 - Mr. RinkaLesson #42

Charles Dickens