Charles Dickens: The Novelist as Social Critic in 'Oliver Twist', Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Charles Dickens: The Novelist as Social Critic in 'Oliver Twist' e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! OLIVER TWIST CHARLES DICKENS • Most famous writer of the 19th century • He believed that the writing could play a big role in fixing problems of the world • Didn’t just write -> he was a great showman • He was hoping to get us interested in some more pretty serious things: 1. THE EVIL OF THE INDUSTRIALISING SOCIETY 2. THE WORKING CONDITIONS IN FACTORIES 3. CHILD LABOUR 4. SOCIAL SNOBBERY 5. THE MADDENING INEFFICIENCIES OF GOVERNEMENT BUREAUCRACY • Dickens’s genius was to discover that the big ambitions to educate the society about its failing didn’t have to be opposed to what his critics called FUN • Racy plots, chatty style, clownish characters, weepy moments and happy ending ( -> usual in Victorian novels) • Dickens wanted to educate via entertainment • He lived in a very poor family -> they can’t afford his studies so he leave school and he was send to work in London at the blacking factory (HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE and he had a great compassion for victims) • At 20 y/o -> journalist (great memory of its experience and he used it in a clever way in his novel) ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL • The BILDINGUSROMAN (an educational novel) appeared in instalments in 1837 • It fictionalizes the humiliations Dickens experience during his childhood • 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 in London • Dickens attacked: 1. The social evils of his time such as poor houses, unjust courtes and the underworld 2. The world of the workhouses founded upon the idea that poverty was a consequence of laziness 3. The officials of the workhouses because they abused the rights of the poor as individuals and caused them misery • STYLE -> rich and original • CHILDREN (usual character): 1. Dickens’s children are innocent or corrupted by adults 2. Most of these children begin in negative circumstances and rise to happy ending which resolves the contradiction in their life created by the adult world