dickens狄更斯

,单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,*,单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,*,*,*,Charles Dickens (1812-1870),Assessment,狄更斯和莎士比亚一同是英国最有代表性的作家,;,像莎士比亚一样,狄更斯已征服了世界,.,狄更斯的缺点是英国性格的缺点,;,他的优点是英国性格的优点,;,但无论是优点,还是缺点,他都以其蓬勃丰饶的构思,无比充沛的创作精力和广阔无边的慈悲之心予以充分的表达,.,-,剑桥英国文学史,Assessment,Charles Dickens, English novelist and one of the most popular writers in the history of literature.,In his enormous body of works, Dickens combined,masterly storytelling,humor, pathos, and irony,with,sharp social criticism,and,acute observation of people and places,both real and imagined.,To say that Dickens is a,social historian,is not in fact saying much. As a matter of fact there have been many historians to quote him for support.,Assessment,The inscription on his tombstone in Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey reads:,“He was a sympathizer to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of Englands greatest writers is lost to the world”.,. His Life,. His Works,. Textual Study:,Oliver Twist,. Literary Features,. His Life,Dickens was born February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth and spent most of his childhood in,London and Kent, both of which appear frequently in his novels.,He started school at the age of nine, but his education was interrupted when his father, an amiable but careless minor civil servant, was imprisoned for debt in 1824. The boy was then forced to support himself by,working in a shoe-polish factory,.,A resulting sense of humiliation and abandonment haunted him for life, and he later described this experience, only slightly altered, in his novel,David Copperfield,(1849-1850).,From 1824 to 1826, Dickens again attended school. For the most part, however, he was self-educated. Among his favorite books were those by such great 18th-century novelists as Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett, and their influence can be discerned in Dickenss own novels.,In 1827 Dickens took a job as a,legal clerk,. After learning,shorthand, he began working as a reporter in the courts and Parliament, perhaps developing the power of,precise description,that was to make his creative writing so remarkable.,In 1834, Dickens became a,political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain by stagecoach to cover election campaigns for the,Morning Chronicle,. His journalism, in the form of sketches which appeared in periodicals from 1833, formed his first collection of pieces,Sketches by Boz,which was published in 1836 and led to the serialization of,his first novel,The Pickwick Papers, in March 1836.,The success of this first novel made Dickens famous. At the same time it,influenced the publishing industry in Great Britain, being issued in a rather unusual form, that of inexpensive,monthly installments,; this method of publication quickly became popular among Dickenss contemporaries.,Dickens subsequently maintained his fame with a constant stream of novels.,A man of enormous energy and wide talents, he also engaged in many other activities. He,edited the weekly periodicals,Household Words,(1850-1859) and,All the Year Round,(1859-1870),composed the travel books,American Notes,(1842) and,Pictures from Italy,(1846),administered charitable organizations, and,pressed for many social reforms,.,In 1842 he,lectured in the United States,in favor of an international copyright agreement and in opposition to slavery. Dickenss extraliterary activities also included,managing a theatrical company,that played before Queen Victoria in 1851 and,giving public readings of his own works in England and America,.,He suffered a fatal stroke on June 9, 1870, and was buried in,Westminster Abbey,five days later.,. His Works,As Dickens matured artistically, his novels developed from,comic tales based on the adventures of a central character, like,The Pickwick Papers,to,works of great social relevance, psychological insight, and narrative and symbolic complexity,.,Roughly speaking, Dickenss literary career can be divided into three periods.,The first period is referred to those years from 1836-1841. This period is marked for optimism,.,Dickens believed that all the evils of the capitalist world would be remedied if only men treated each other with kindness, justice and sympathetic understanding. The main novels include,Sketches by Boz,(1836),The Pickwick Papers,(1836-1837),Oliver Twist,(1837-1838),Nicholas Nickleby,(1838-1839),The Old Curiosity Shop,(1840-1841),Barnaby Rudge,(1841).,The second period began from 1842 and was a period of excitement and irritation,.,In this period, Dickens works included,Dombey and Son,(1846-1848),David Copperfield,(1849-1850).,Dickens works in the third period show intensifying pessimism,. His main novels produced in this period were:,Bleak House,(1852-1853),Hard Times,(1854),Little Dorrit,(1855-1857),A Tale of Two Cities,(1859),Great Expectations,(1860-1861),Our Mutual Friend, Edwin Drood,(unfinished 1870),A Tale of Two Cities,“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”,“这是一个最好的时代，这是一个最坏的时代；这是一个智慧的年代，这是一个愚蠢的年代；这是一个光明的季节，这是一个黑暗的季节；这是希望之春，这是失望之冬；人们面前应有尽有，人们面前一无所有；人们正踏上天堂之路，人们正走向地狱之门。”,.Texual Study,Oliver Twist,Character List,Oliver Twist,Fagin,Nancy,Mr. Brownlow,Rose Maylie,Bill Sikes,Monks,Agnes Fleming,Mr. Leeford,Plot Overview,Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother, whose name no one knows, is found on the street and dies just after Olivers birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in a badly run home for young orphans and then is transferred to a workhouse for adults. After the other boys bully Oliver into asking for more gruel at the end of a meal, Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle, offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy away from the workhouse.,Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker,Mr. Sowerberry,. When the undertakers other apprentice, Noah Claypole, makes disparaging comments about Olivers mother, Oliver attacks him and incurs the Sowerberrys wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away at dawn and,travels toward London,.,Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets,Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor,Fagin,. It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off.,He is caught but narrowly escapes being convicted of the theft.,Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. Mr. Brownlow is struck by Olivers resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlows home, but two young adults in Fagins gang,Bill Sikes,and his lover,Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin.,Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there,Mrs. Maylie,and her beautiful adopted niece,Rose,. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named,Monks,are set on recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Olivers mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket.,When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagins designs, but a member of Fagins gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancys disclosure reaches Sikes,he brutally murders Nancy and flees London,. Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently,hangs himself while trying to escape,.,Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about Olivers parentage from him.,It is revealed that Monks is Olivers half brother.,Their father, Mr. Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Olivers mother,Agnes Fleming,. Monks has been pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family inheritance.,Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Olivers share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that,Rose is Agness younger sister,hence Olivers aunt,.,Fagin is hung for his crimes,. Finally,Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside,.,Close reading,Read the selected part in our textbook and summarize the theme of it.,Theme,:,By this novel, the author has provided a vivid picture of the underworld as well as the horrible cruelty of the workhouse system of the time.,However, while sympathizing with the miseries of the people, Dickens did no know what or who was responsible for such miseries and even,cherished illusion about the rich, idle and benevolent people,.,Characterization,Oliver Twist,Fagin,Nancy,Oliver Twist,Oliver Twist,Throughout the novel, Dickens uses Olivers character to challenge the Victorian idea that paupers and criminals are already evil at birth, arguing instead that,a corrupt environment is the source of vice,.,On many levels,Oliver is not a believable character, because although he is raised in corrupt surroundings, his purity and virtue are absolute,.,Other pauper children use rough Cockney slang, but,Oliver, oddly enough, speaks in proper Kings English. His grammatical fastidiousness is also inexplicable, as Oliver presumably is not well-educated.,Even when he is abused and manipulated, Oliver does not become angry or indignant.,Oliver does not present a complex picture of a person torn between good and evilinstead,he is goodness incarnate,.,Fagin,A conniving career criminal who is,ugly, simpering(,傻笑的,), miserly, and avaricious,. Fagin takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him. He is also a buyer of other peoples stolen goods. He rarely commits crimes himself, preferring to employ others to commit them. Dickenss portrait of Fagindisplays the influence of,anti-Semitic,stereotypes. Constant references to him as “the Jew” seem to indicate that his negative traits are intimately connected to his ethnic identity.,Nancy,Nancy,A young prostitute and one of Fagins former child pickpockets. Nancy is also Bill Sikess lover. Her love for Sikes and her sense of moral decency come into conflict when Sikes abuses Oliver. Despite her criminal lifestyle, she is among the noblest characters in the novel. In effect, she gives her life for Oliver when Sikes murders her for revealing Monkss plots.,A major concern of Oliver Twist is the question of whether a bad environment can irrevocably poison someones character and soul,. As the novel progresses, the character who best illustrates the contradictory issues brought up by that question is Nancy. She is immersed in the vices condemned by her society, but she also commits perhaps the most noble act in the novel when she sacrifices her own life in order to protect Oliver.,Nancys moral complexity is unique among the major characters in,Oliver Twist,. The novel is full of characters who are all good and can barely comprehend evil, such as Oliver, Rose, and Brownlow; and characters who are all evil and can barely comprehend good, such as Fagin, Sikes, and Monks.,Only Nancy comprehends and is capable of both good and evil. Nancys character suggests that the boundary between virtue and vice is not always clearly drawn.,.,Literary Features,:,1.,Dickens has a tendency to depict the grotesque (very odd or unusual, fantastically ugly or absurd) characters or events,. Most of Dickens characters have a peculiar habit, manner, behavior, dress, and catch phrase of his or her own.,2.,Dickens loves to instill life into inanimate things and to compare animate beings to inanimate things,. For example, in,Hard Times,he compares the up and down movement of engines in a factory to the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness, and the smoke in the air above to snakes trailing themselves for ever and ever.,3.,Dickens is noted for his description of pathetic scenes that aim to arouse peoples sympathy. Pathos is a distinctive quality in Dickenss writings.,Though we may feel it affected, the readers of Dickens time had great love of pathetic scenes as they were fond of,melodramas,（,情节,剧）,which were very popular in their time and which are a kind of naively sensational entertainment with the main character either excessively virtuous or excessively evil. Dickens knew what his readers like, and he loved to avail himself of every opportunity to appeal to the emotions of his readers.,