Well I guess last night, for some reason, when I posted my thread nothing showed up. Anyway I have a problem … I am doing a paper on why Charles Dickens should be included in my class studies in British Literature. This is what I have so far
Charles Dickens is known in the Victorian period to be one of the greatest novelist of all time. The question that exists now is why and should we study the works of Charles Dickens today? I, among others, believe that Charles Dickens should be studied because of his ability to capture the imagination of his audience by his power of observation, incredible wit, unforgettable characters, and a command of the English language. Dickens’ fiction provids a voice for the causes and frustrations of the poor and working classes helping to assure popularity across class boundaries.
I am stuck on how to approach my reasoning. I know I want to include his texts such as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. We are to base our paper on his Bio and historical importance. I just need a jump start because I think my brain is dead (I just got through with typing a 7 page paper earlier). IF anyone has any opinions on why they think Dickens should be studied please let me know … or if you know of any great sites that could help me along my path :). Thanks
Dickens was one of the greatest storytellers in the English language, probably second only to Shakespeare. Anyone who aspires to be a writer should read him, just to see a master at work.
His works are a window on all levels of Victorian society. Though fiction, his novels portray the horror that was the lives of the working class better than any history book because we are inside the minds of those living it.
I might have been a little hard on you initially, kid: heres what I duug up on www.upchuck.com, a popular Dickensian website. Dickens was born at an early age in London, England, in the olden days. His father was a justly little-known misogynist pampheteer, least celebrated for his tract Mary, Or Wheres My Bloody Dinner, Woman?, and his mother was a wet-nurse, mostly because Dickens father sold her umbrella to buy laudanum. His formative years were shaped by a short-lived attempt to run away and join the circus and become a bearded lady, a traumatic episode which shaped the later perceptions of gender-roles and facial hair which have so interested critics, perhaps most famously explored in his novel Hetty Dungbucket, Or The Beard That Ate Whitechapel. This was also mirrored in his short-lived marriage, where in an interesting counterpoint to the art critic John Ruskin, Dickens was famously unable to consumate the union after learning that his wife was clean-shaven. At the circus, however, Dickens entered into a fruitful collaboration with the young Charles Darwin, who was then rehearsing a chimp act: this partnership dissolved later over mutual acrimony about bananas, and Dickens was later to revenge himself upon Darwin in his withering riposte to Darwins On The Origin Of Species, tellingly entitled Bog Off, Hairy. It was at about this time that Dickens was to achieve his greatest fame, writing under the pen-name Charles Dickens, in order to pretend to be a female writer pretending to be a male writer: this may have reflected a wish to emulate the success of the Bronte brothers, or he may have simply been confused.
G. K. Chesterton has a wonderful biography/critique of Dickens that you might try to get ahold of.
One of his main points is that Dickens creates characters who live and breathe as if they were real people. Scrooge and Bob Cratchit, Oliver Twist and Fagin, Uriah Heep and Mr Micawber, Madame DuFarge, and the list goes on. Although they have strong elements of charicature, they are very human, and you can expect to meet them on the street or at the pub.
Further, Dickens creates scenes or pictures that live in the memory. I can’t read anything about the French Revolution without imagining Madame DuFarge sitting knitting in the front row of the audience of the guillotine. Whenever I’m in London at Covent Garden, I can’t help wondering whether some of the street performers (“buskers”) or urchins work for Fagin.
Like at least two others who have responded, for me, it’s Dickens’ ability to tell a story that makes him so important to me. I realize that this sounds silly, but not all authors tell stories. When I read Dickens, I can almost hear him as he unfolds his story. And in no time I am caught up in it
For instance, early on in Tale of Two Cities a messanger has to deliver a message to “the Dover Mail” in the pouring rain, and because of the way Dickens tells it, you really appreciate what the messanger is going through, how the people on the stage don’t trust him appearing out of nowhere and how he is looking forward to the pint at the pub on the way home. I mean, it’s just a little, throw-away detail, but Dickens makes it memorable. That takes a story teller and there are so few great story tellers.
HANG ON!
I am just noticing, you’re asking for help here to write a paper?
I was reading very quickly, and thought that the class would not cover Dickens unless you (and others) persuaded the teacher. Now I see that you’re just trying to get ideas for a paper?? That is, that the teacher assigned “Why is Dickens relevant today?” … and you’ve tricked us in to helping write this paper??
BAH! HUMBUG! Phoo on you! THINK FOR YOURSELF, you jerk.
We don’t do homework here, there are homework-help websites.
I feel… soiled. Tricked. Betrayed… and inclined to delete this thread, but it’s probably too late. I wish that I had put false information into it, so that when you copied my ideas, you’d have made mistakes.
I feel… soiled. Tricked. Betrayed… and inclined to delete this thread, but it’s probably too late. I wish that I had put false information into it, so that when you copied my ideas, you’d have made mistakes. **
[/QUOTE]
Heh heh heh heh heh. Don`t worry, others are already onto it.