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История литературы / 27. Realism. Charles Dickens

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Realism was a trend that concerned itself with the middle classes. They were really despised in the 18th and 19th centuries, and now they come into forefront. If the English Empire wanted to make itself prominent in literature, it should rely on the heritage of its realistic writers because they really expressed energy of the middle classes (comprise merchants, lawyers, owners of plants and the ones who tried to establish their own enterprises. Middle class citizens worked for their own benefit, and only then for the benefit of their own country. Their advantage was the ability to balance these two approaches. That was the difference between the middle class and aristocracy. The local colour of daily life was the subject matter of realists. They hardly cared about the heroes of the past and they disregarded the future. That’s why the main concern of the realistic writers was everyday life, and every step within it. The originators of the trend (French writers): Stendahl, Honore de Balzac (Comedie Humaine), Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary). In England the first writer who suggested the beginning of realism was Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Dickens was not a very educated man. He was sent to school only in his teens. Self-education was his only resource. Exactly from self-education he took everything he knew and needed. Not so many readers can understand the essence of Dickens. For many critics Dickens is in many cases boring and insufficiently educated to create a plot. There are fields he never touched upon in his novels. Probable, he really didn’t know what to say. E.g. there is practically no love in his novels. Probably Dickens treated it as a childish affair. Lots of ideas which could excite the reader were not even spoken of – art, music, even literature, etc. Probably, they didn’t matter for him or mattered very little. That was the essence of his attitude to life. That’s why his characters seem to be unreal. He was never driven by the purpose to attract the reader’s attention. The readers were just the source of his immortal images. His images are like the summaries of the essence of the human being. All critics agree that Dickens gave us the world of his own. And in this case the world was logical and complete. His books were not caricatures as some critics say. They belonged to the world of his own. And no writer can imitate Dickens, that’s why he even had a nickname “Inimitable”. Dickens started his literary career as a reporter; and the job of every journalist is to give us facts and details. When we take his first book “Pickwick Club” we understand that it was the brightest illustration of the fact that he was a true journalist. Critics even say that in 1837 two reigns began – that of Queen Victoria and that of Mr. Pickwick. The novel was just a succession of episodes. Initially he invented these episodes to illustrate a number of pictures. But Dickens changed all that. He decided to have a picture to start with and then to improvise further. That was the best quality of his writing – improvisation. All his characters are of a piece. They may be summed up as definite human qualities. Dickens created very realistic people but they are never down to earth, they are concrete & individual at the same time being types, generalizations. Every type represents an attitude, a quality or a feeling. This quality becomes prominent against the background of innocence & sincerity. E.g. Mr. Pickwick is curious, naïve and enthusiastic. He tries to investigate humanity and he tries to understand what the Englishman really was at that time. The Englishman was and is characterized as possessing good English understatement, e.g. Sam Weller in “Pickwick Club” who is very much down to life, who loves his childlike master and who always comments on Pickwick’s enthusiasm. He talks the language absolutely different from his master’s, but Sam Weller’s language is very much expressive. As to the structure of ‘Pickwick Papers”, we have a theme and during the piece it is being developed. It comes like music. Mr. Pickwick is the main melody, and his friends specify this melody. Sam Weller acts as a positive commentator, and Mr. Jingle who is a knave acts as a negative commentator. Mr Pickwick, with his three friends who comprise the "Pickwick Club", sets off to see what sights and adventures can be encountered in the towns and villages of England. He is a retired, unmarried, man of business who is somewhat out of his time in seeing nothing but good in his fellow men, and is thus liable to misunderstand and be misunderstood. It is Mr Pickwick's naivety and innocence that lead him into a number of scrapes, from which he is rescued by his cockney manservant, Sam Weller, whom he acquires along the way. It is when Sam enters the story that The Pickwick Papers comes to life. Sam, although much younger than Mr Pickwick, has lived a far less sheltered life, and is able to educate the older man in the ways of the world. Indeed, it is when Mr Pickwick asks Mrs Bardell, his landlady, whether he should take a companion on board that his troubles really start. She misunderstands his questioning as being not about employing a manservant but a proposal of marriage to her, an event that leads to her suing him for breach of promise of marriage. Part of the plot concerns the actions of a strolling player, Alfred Jingle, who has an eye for the ladies and has to be kept in check by the Pickwickians. It is while trying to thwart Jingle that Mr Pickwick is discovered in the grounds of a girls' boarding school, which is not the only time that he suffers embarrassment through his good nature being misinterpreted. These all provide fascinating pen-portraits of life in pre-Victorian England. Dickens's distinctive style is one of the most admired in the English language. USE OF WORDS AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE Dickens had a great love of language, which reveals itself in elaborate descriptions of people, places, and events. Long, complex sentences are common, but the words are rarely wasted. When simplicity is called for, Dickens can be frugal with his words. REPETITION Repeating words and phrases within a sentence or paragraph adds emphasis and musicality to Dickens's prose (and makes it fun to read aloud). ALLUSIONS Dickens peppers his works with allusions to literature, mythology, the Bible, current events. Most of his readers would be familiar with these allusions, but some of them might be confusing to the modern reader. RHETORICAL DEVICES Rhetorical devices are those which mirror techniques used in speech-making: exclamatory sentences, direct address to the audience (and to characters), questions. There are times when you might feel that Dickens is making a speech rather than writing a novel. COMIC RELIEF There are few greater comic writers than Dickens. Some say he is a better writer when he is comic than when he is serious and sentimental.