Scarica CHARLES DICKENS - life and novels e più Slide in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Charles Dickens William Powell Frith, Portrait of Charles Dickens, London, Victoria and Albert Museum. • Born in Portsmouth in 1812. • Unhappy childhood: he had to work in a factory at the age of 12 (his father went to prison for debts). • He became a newspaper reporter with the pen name Boz. • In 1836 Sketches by Boz, articles about London people and scenes, were published in instalments. Evert A. Duyckinick, Charles Dickens 1. Dickens’s life • Detailed description of “Seven Dials”, a notorious slum district its sense of disorientation and confinement is clearly expressed in Dickens’s novels Gustave Doré and Blanchard Jerrold, Dudley Street, Seven Dials from London: A Pilgrimage, 1872. Dickens shifted the social frontiers of the novel: the 18th- century realistic upper middle- class world was replaced by the one of the lower orders. He depicted Victorian society in all its variety, its richness and its squalor. 3. Dickens’s characters An unfinished painting by R.W. Buss (1804-75) variously known as A Souvenir of Dickens and Dickens’s Dream. Painted 1875. Charles Dickens Museum, London. He created: •caricatures he exaggerated and ridiculed peculiar social characteristics of the middle, lower and lowest classes •weak female characters He was on the side of the poor, the outcast, the working-class. Dickens tried to get the common intelligence of the country to alleviate social sufferings. He was a campaigning novelist and his books highlight all the great Victorian controversies: • the faults of the legal system (Oliver Twist) • the horrors of factory employment (David Copperfield, Hard Times) • scandals in private schools (David Copperfield) 5. Dickens’s aim • the miseries of prostitution • the appalling living conditions in slums (Bleak House) • corruption in government (Bleak House) Dickens’s style very rich and original The main stylistic features of his novels are: 1.long list of objects and people. 2.adjectives used in pairs or in group of three and four. 3.several details, not strictly necessary. 6. Dickens’s style • The protagonist, Oliver Twist, is always innocent and pure and remains incorruptible throughout the novel. • At the end he is saved from a life of villainy by a well- to-do family. • The setting is London. • Dickens attacked: a. the social evils of his times such as poor houses, unjust courts and the underworld. b. the world of the workhouses founded upon the idea that poverty was a consequence of laziness. c. the officials of the workhouses because they abused the rights of the poor as individuals and caused them further misery. This novel is the most autobiographical of all Dickens’s novels. In the preface the novelist wrote: “… like many fond parents, I have in my heart a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield”. 8. David Copperfield (1849- 50) Advertisement for David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, 1884. • Narrative technique a “Bildungsroman”; the protagonist, David, functions also as narrator. • The characters both realistic and romantic, characterised by a particular psychological trait. • Atmosphere a combination of realism and enchantment.
