7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

1/34

The World of Charles Dickens

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

2/34

Were on the move

Weve been in the Renaissance (1500 1650)

Next is the Neo-Classical Period (16601798)

Dryden

Defoe

Pope

Johnson Boswell

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

3/34

On to

The Romantic Period (17981837)

Burns

Blake

Wordsworth

Coleridge Byron

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

4/34

And then into

The Victorian Period (18371901)

Dickens Housman

Hardy

Thackery

Tennyson Browning (both)

Brontes (both)

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

5/34

Dickens Biography

Born February 7, 1812

1824 -- Dickens worked at Warrens

Blacking Warehouse

1824 -- Mr. Dickens (Charles father) taken

to debtors prison; family joins him

Imprisoned from February - May

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

6/34

More Bio

1827 - Dickens family evicted from home

for not paying rent

Charles is pulled out of private school

Charles, now 15, becomes law clerk and

free-lance writer

1834 - Charles takes Boz as pen name

1834 - Charles Dad re-arrested for debts

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

7/34

Dickens starts Publishing!

1836 -- Sketches by Boz

1837 -- ThePickwick Papers

and on a personal note...

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

8/34

Here Comes the Bride

1836 (Dickens is 24)

he and Catherine

Hogarth get married

and..one year later, the

first little Dickens is

born

and one year after that,

baby # 2 is born...

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

9/34

but, back to business!

1837-- Oliver Twistis serially published

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

10/34

What was happening in 1837?

King William IV of England dies

Victoria becomes queen of England

Benjamin Disraeli delivers his first speechin the House of Commons

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

11/34

And in the arts?

Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes Twice ToldTalesit becomes a best seller

William H. Prescott publishes The Historyof the Reign of Isabella and Ferdinand

John Constable died (English landscape

painter) Berlioz completes Grande Messe desMorts, Opus 5

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

12/34

Two Constables

Flatford Lock and Mill 1812

The White Horse 1819

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

13/34

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

14/34

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

15/34

In the sciences

Industrialist August Borsig opens ironfoundry and engine-building factory in

Berlin Wheatstone and Cooke patent electric

telegraph

Samuel Morse exhibits his electric telegraph Dutchman Johannes Diderik born (NobelPrize in physics in 1910)

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

16/34

And then

1838 --Nicholas Nickleby

1840 -- The Old Curiosity Shop

1841 --Barnaby Rudge

1842 --American Notes

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

17/34

Back to Dickens

And the beat goes on 1843 --A Christmas Carol

1844 --Martin Chuzzlewit

1844 -- The Chimes

1845 -- The Cricket on the Hearth

1846 -- The Battle of Life 1846 --Dombey and Son

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

18/34

And so it goes...

1850 --David Copperfield

1853 --Bleak House

1853 --A Childs History of Englandand...

a near nervous breakdown

1854 --Hard Times

1857 -- Little Dorrit

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

19/34

Is he done yet?

1859 --A Tale of Two Cities

1861 -- Great Expectations

1865 -- Our Mutual Friends

1869 -- The Mystery of Edwin Drood

(unfinished)

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

20/34

Whats the Point?

Dickens wrote 15

major novels in a

career spanning 33years.

His peak of creativity

and literary prowess

was in mid - latecareer from 1848 -

1865.

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

21/34

Dickens Best

Bleak House

Little Dorrit

Great Expectations

Our Mutual Friend

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

22/34

And in the meantime

He fathered 10

children.

His wife left him (in1856).

He gave numerous

talks across Europe

and in America.

He developed heart

trouble.

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

23/34

He exercised his social

conscience He crusaded for childrens rights.

He was an advocate of child labor laws to

protect children.

He opposed cruelty, deprivation, and

corporal punishment of children.

He believed in and lobbied for just

treatment of criminals.

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

24/34

In addition,

He protested a greedy, uncaring,

materialistic society through such works as

A Christmas Carol, which Dickens called asledgehammer he used figuratively to

wake up the reading public

He repeatedly used satire to highlightproblems in his society

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

25/34

More good works

He gave 16 public readings in 1858 to raise

money for the Hospital for Sick Children

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

26/34

And in 1865 a key year

He published a novel (Our Mutual

Friends), got frostbite, and survived aterrible train crash

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

27/34

A sad ending

1870 -- Dickens, who had been in declining

health since 1866, died of a cerebral

hemorrhage.

He is buried in the Poets Corner in

Westminster Abbey in London

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

28/34

Westminster Abbey

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

29/34

Poets Corner

Dickens epitaph: He

was a sympathizer to

the poor, the suffering,and the oppressed; and

by his death, one of

Englands greatest

writers is lost to theworld.

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

30/34

What about Oliver Twist?

Dickens wrote, I

wished to show in

little Oliver, theprinciple of Good

surviving through

every adverse

circumstance andtriumphing at last.

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

31/34

Themes

The powerlessness of children

Goods ability to triumph over evil

Mans humanity to man

Mans inhumanity to man

The outcasts search for status and identity

The heinous nature of crime and criminals

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

32/34

What to watch (out) for...

Use of irony

Use of coincidence

Use of humor

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

33/34

Definitions, please

Situational irony = a discrepancy between

what the reader expects and what actuallyhappens

7/27/2019 Dickens Talk

34/34

Dickens Belief:

To be thoroughly

earnest is everything,

and to be anythingshort of it is nothing.