Charles Dickens - Schema/Slide, Schemes and Mind Maps of English

Download Charles Dickens - Schema/Slide and more Schemes and Mind Maps English in PDF only on Docsity!

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

• (^) Dickens was the great novelist of cities , especially London.
• (^) London is depicted at three different social levels : 1.the parochial world of the workhouses  its inhabitants belong to the lower middle class. 2.the criminal world  murderers, pickpockets living in squalid slums. 3.the Victorian middle class  respectable people believing in human dignity.

2. The setting of Dickens’s

novels

• (^) Detailed description of “Seven Dials” , a notorious slum district  its sense of disorientation and confinement is clearly expressed in Dickens’s novels

2. The setting of Dickens’s

novels

Gustave Doré and Blanchard Jerrold, Dudley Street, Seven Dials from London: A Pilgrimage , 1872.

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.

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.

• (^) Family , childhood and

poverty  the subjects

to which he returned time

and again.

• (^) Dickens’s children are

either innocent or

corrupted by adults.

4. Dickens’s themes

A scene from Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist (2005)

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

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 miseries of prostitution
• (^) the appalling living conditions in slums ( Bleak House )
• (^) corruption in government ( Bleak House )

5. Dickens’s aim

6. Dickens’s style

Dickens’s style  very rich and original The main stylistic features of his novels are: 4.repetitions of the same word/s and/or sentence structure. 5.the same concept/s is/are expressed more than once, but with different words. 6.use of antithetical images in order to underline the characters’ features.

6. Dickens’s style

Dickens’s style  very rich and original The main stylistic features of his novels are: 7.exaggeration of the characters’ faults. 8.suspense at the end of the episodes or introduction of a sensational event to keep the readers’ interest.

7. Oliver Twist (1838)

• (^) 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. Etching by George Cruikshank of scene from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens as Oliver asks for more food in workhouse.

• (^) Dickens attacked:

7. Oliver Twist (1838)

a. the social evils of his times such as poor houses, unjust courts and the underworld. Etching by George Cruikshank of scene from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens as Oliver asks for more food in workhouse.

c. the officials of the workhouses because they abused the rights of the poor as individuals and caused them further misery.

7. Oliver Twist (1838)

• (^) Dickens attacked: Etching by George Cruikshank of scene from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens as Oliver asks for more food in workhouse.

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,