Charles Dickens - notes | Appunti di Inglese

— CHARLES DICKENS

He was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, he moved to London at the age of 10. When his father is

sent to a debtor's prison, he is forced to go to work in a factory."

He experienced the exploitation of children at work (lucidava scarpe). In fact it was a very

traumatic experience for him that marked his life.

Afterwards he works as a journalist and learns about contemporary issues. The fact that he

became a journalist enabled him to meet a wide range of people. Then he started to write by

the pen-name Boz."

He wrote 2 series of articles sketches by bolts describing London people. He published this

series in instalments. In his first novel, “The Pickwick Papers”, comic and picaresque

elements are mixed. This first novel was published in monthly instalments. His novels make

him famous in Britain and in the United States. He died by a stroke in 1870.

- THEMES

1. Social injustice, the poverty and suffering of the masses and the class conflicts of

Victorian England: he develops an increasingly critical attitude towards contemporary

society, as in Oliver Twist and Hard Times. In Oliver Twist he criticise the

workhouses.

2. Victorian love of money and its absence of relationships not based on self-interest.

Dickens wrote a series of novels which were more carefully plotted, and organised

more coherently around a single theme or closed related themes, such as the Victorian

love of money and its lack of disinterest affections.

3. An image of the Victorian Christmas that survives to this day:

• A Christmas Carol (1843) combines the supernatural and the sentimental with

powerful moral purpose.

4. The loves, pains and wonders of childhood (mostly autobiographical), the most

important novels:

• David Copperffield (1849-50), often considered his masterpiece;

• Great Expectations (1860-61), is an example of BILDUNGSROMAN, It is a" well-

structured novel on the theme of ‘growing up’."

- SETTING. CHARACTERS AND PLOTS

1. He sets his novel in:

• the countryside or provincial towns;

• the industrial settlements of the North (Hard Times);

• London, a very crowded city where different classes and social groups live together,

but didn’t communicate (Oliver Twist);

2. He creates lively, unforgettable character, who represent all social strata:

• mainly from the lower and middle classes;

• his upper class and aristocratic characters are stereotyped, representing virtues or

vices.

His characters are easily divided into good and bad, mainly in his early novels;

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— CHARLES DICKENS

He was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, he moved to London at the age of 10. When his father is sent to a debtor's prison, he is forced to go to work in a factory. He experienced the exploitation of children at work (lucidava scarpe). In fact it was a very traumatic experience for him that marked his life. Afterwards he works as a journalist and learns about contemporary issues. The fact that he became a journalist enabled him to meet a wide range of people. Then he started to write by the pen-name Boz. He wrote 2 series of articles sketches by bolts describing London people. He published this series in instalments. In his first novel, “The Pickwick Papers”, comic and picaresque elements are mixed. This first novel was published in monthly instalments. His novels make him famous in Britain and in the United States. He died by a stroke in 1870.

- THEMES 1. Social injustice, the poverty and suffering of the masses and the class conflicts of Victorian England: he develops an increasingly critical attitude towards contemporary society, as in Oliver Twist and Hard Times. In Oliver Twist he criticise the workhouses. 2. Victorian love of money and its absence of relationships not based on self-interest. Dickens wrote a series of novels which were more carefully plotted, and organised more coherently around a single theme or closed related themes, such as the Victorian love of money and its lack of disinterest affections. 3. An image of the Victorian Christmas that survives to this day: - A Christmas Carol (1843) combines the supernatural and the sentimental with powerful moral purpose. 4. The loves, pains and wonders of childhood (mostly autobiographical), the most important novels: - David Copperffield (1849-50), often considered his masterpiece; - Great Expectations (1860-61), is an example of BILDUNGSROMAN, It is a well- structured novel on the theme of ‘growing up’. - SETTING. CHARACTERS AND PLOTS 1. He sets his novel in: - the countryside or provincial towns; - the industrial settlements of the North (Hard Times); - London, a very crowded city where different classes and social groups live together, but didn’t communicate (Oliver Twist); 2. He creates lively, unforgettable character, who represent all social strata: - mainly from the lower and middle classes; - his upper class and aristocratic characters are stereotyped, representing virtues or vices. His characters are easily divided into good and bad, mainly in his early novels;

His novels involve many parallel plots and subplots, intrigue, mystery, and incredible coincidences. Plots are very adventurous and have an episodic structure (written in instalments). - STYLE He is a master of the English language: in fact he has a great ability to create dialogue; but he also combines the pathetic with the comic, in fact his strength is humour and his weaknesses are melodramatic and openly didactic passages. Generally his works have a didactic aim. — OLIVER TWIST Oliver twist is one of the first novels in English literature to focus on a child protagonist; it's set in the backstreets and slums of London. It came out in instalments and tells the adventures of an orphan who manages to preserve his angelic character despite a very hard life. It is a perfect example of the best qualities of Dickens’ art: he combines the sentimental, melodramatic story of an orphan child exploitation by a gang of thieves using social satire and realism. The comic element helps to highlight serious issues such as the bad treatment of orphans in workhouses and the gangs of child-thieves in London. This enables him to underline important social issues, such as the new Poor Law, which assigned poor people to workhouses in which living conditions resembled those of a prison. Dickens is also very good at mixing social criticism with lively portraits of universal characters such as Mr Bumble or Mrs Mann in the parish where Oliver is brought up. — HARD TIMES Hard Times is set in Coketown, an industrial city in the North of England (the fictitious name means ‘town of coke’, coke being a type of coal used in industry). The novel is built around two issues debated at the time: the inhumanity of the factory system, and the application of the principles of the utilitarian philosophy, which judged the value of everything according to its practical value. The utilitarian teaching method is presented by Mr. Gradgrind, the teacher who is all for facts and figures as opposed to feelings and good sense; and a couple of students of his class, Sissy and Bitzer. The scene is full of natural and symbolic moments, as in the loss of identity involved in the change of Sissy’s name to a more impersonal form. The passage is also comic and satirical, as in the pedantic dictionary definition of a horse provided by Bitzer and praised by the teacher. — DICKENS AND VERGA Charles Dickens and Giovanni Verga lived and wrote their most important works in the 19th century. While Dickens lived in England during the Victorian Age, Giovanni Verga lived in Italy during the post-unitarian time, in the decades after Italy had become a united country. In their works both focus on the society of their time criticising social evils such as the exploitation of children, the denial of childhood and a lack of human rights. But they deal with these issues in different ways, because Sicilian and British society were very different:

Charles Dickens - notes, Appunti di Inglese

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— CHARLES DICKENS