Scarica Charles Dickens: Life & Works of a Victorian Novelist - Focus on 'Hard Times' & 'Coketown' e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! CHARLES DICKENS Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812.When he was 12, his father was imprisoned for debt, so he was sent to work in a factory, an experience which influenced his works. Later, he began his career first as a parliamentary reporter and then as a journalist. In 1836 he adopted the pen name “Boz” and he published “Sketches by Boz”, a collection of articles describing London’s people and scenes. Soon after he published “The Pick-wick papers”, which revealed his humoristic and satirical qualities. He then started his career as a novelist. The protagonists of his autobiographical novels Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit became symbols of an exploited (take advantaged of) childhood. Other novels, such as Bleak House, Hard Times, Great Expectations deal with social issues and the conditions of the working classes. He died in London in 1870 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Most of Charles Dickens works shared the same features: Setting: most of his novels are set in London. He knew well the social scene of London, and was critical against the impact of industrialism to society (corruption, public abuses, crimes). He described the urban slums using Gothic colours, and emphasized their cruelty. With his novels Dickens made the wealthier classes aware of the condition of the working classes. Characters: he created caricatures (stereotypes), mainly of the middle and lower classes. He was on the side of the poor, the outcast (differently from the18th century novel: he didn’t describe the world of the upper-middle class but that of the working class). Children: children were very often the moral teachers of the adults, and conveyed the moral message of the novel. Children of working class families were usually sent to work and exploited by adults. Others became criminals. Dickens was obsessed with children and he presents them as either innocent or corrupted by adults. HARD TIMES 'COKETOWN' Hard Times was written by esteemed English Victorian-era author Charles Dickens. The work was first published in the weekly periodical known as Household Words from April to August of 1854 and then published in book format that same year. Hard Times is considered a dystopian satire of the Victorian genre. The importance of one's imagination and the dangers of industrialization are two main themes and takeaways of the novel. Dickens reportedly used his novel to offer commentary on the horrors he'd witnessed in the factories of England and the issues with growing industrialization and its effects on people. He was known to use his novels to help shed light on various social conditions and problems. The novel is divided into three sections and each section is composed of three chapters: sowing; reaping; garnering. In 'Coke town' an extract taken from the novel Hard Times, Dickens showed the negative effects of the process of industrialisation on people as well as on the environment. Dickens introduced the concepts of alienation and pollution. The former is related to the labours belonging to the working class, Dickens describes the absence of any hopes of betterment for them and the latter is related to the polluted atmosphere that surrounded the invented town: red bricks covered in ashes, a smelly purple rivers etc . On the page below the extract taken from the novel: COKETOWN It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes → Polluted town description had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a → Polluted canal and river river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye,
