Concetti Chiave
- Charles Dickens' early life was marked by hardship, influencing his works with autobiographical elements like those seen in "Oliver Twist" and "Hard Times".
- He depicted London at different social levels, highlighting the disparity between poverty and wealth, often focusing on the plight of the exploited and the criminal underworld.
- His novels featured caricatures to portray social classes, consistently supporting the poor and highlighting themes such as family, childhood, and poverty.
- Dickens used stylistic techniques like suspense, meaningful names, and detailed descriptions to engage readers and critique social issues, often resolving them with happy endings.
- His influence extended beyond literature to cinema, contributing techniques like parallel montage and the close-up, while his characters became part of the cultural lexicon.
Indice
Dickens'Life
Born in Portsmouth in 1812 and had an unhappy childhood because he had to work in a factory at the age of 12 (his father went to prison for debts). In his works there are autobiographical elements and became a newspaper reporter and magazine’s editor named Boz. He published some articles called Sketches, about London people and published in instalments. The protagonists of his novels were the symbols of an exploited childhood like in Oliver Twist or Hard Times (1854),which represent social issues of that time. Dickens was the great novelist of cities, especially London which was described at 3 different social levels, from poverty to richness: the parochial (parishes) world of the workhouses, insensible to the feelings of their inhabitants who belong to the lower classes; the criminal world of murderers, pickpockets living in squalid slums; the Victorian middle class represented by respectable people.
Works
He created caricatures exaggerating particular and ridiculous characteristics of classes to make them recognizable. However, in his novels, he always supported the poor, the outcast, the working-class. His themes were family, childhood and poverty. He invented the expression "Dickensian poverty" that is now used to describe an unacceptable level of poverty, similar to what Dickens exposed in his novels. Dickens’s children are innocent or corrupted by adults like Oliver Twist. Most of these begin in negative circumstances and finished with an happy ending which resolve the contradictions created by the adult world. Dickens tried to persuade his readers to solve social sufferings highlighting Victorian negative aspects: 1. The faults of the legal system; 2. The horrors of factory works; 3. Scandals in private schools; 4. The bad living conditions in the slums. The main stylistic features of his novels are: long list of objects and people; adjectives used in groups; several details; repetitions of the same words and sentence; use of antithetical images and ideas to underline the characters’ features; suspense at the end of the episodes to keep the readers’ interest like in instalment novels. He used meaningful names to suggest traits and role of people and places (e.g. “Twist”, “Coketown” that was the city of coal). Some of his characters became so iconic that they entered common language. For example, a scrooge means somebody lacking in generosity. His character were modern because of their way of talking. Dickens was also important in cinema development, inventing the parallel montage (where two stories run alongside each other) and the close-up (primopiano).
Oliver Twist
This novel is considered an educational one, was published in installments starting in 1837 and represents the humiliations he experienced during his childhood.The protagonist, Oliver Twist is a poor boy from unknown parents, he is always innocent and pure and remains incorruptible throughout the novel.Domande da interrogazione
- Quali elementi autobiografici si trovano nelle opere di Dickens?
- Quali sono i temi principali affrontati da Dickens nei suoi romanzi?
- Come Dickens ha influenzato il linguaggio e la cultura popolare?
- Quali innovazioni stilistiche ha introdotto Dickens nella narrativa?
Nelle opere di Dickens ci sono elementi autobiografici che riflettono la sua infanzia infelice, come il lavoro in fabbrica a 12 anni e le esperienze di povertà e sfruttamento, evidenti in romanzi come "Oliver Twist".
I temi principali affrontati da Dickens includono la famiglia, l'infanzia e la povertà. Ha cercato di evidenziare le sofferenze sociali e le ingiustizie del sistema legale, le condizioni di lavoro nelle fabbriche, gli scandali nelle scuole private e le pessime condizioni di vita nei bassifondi.
Dickens ha creato espressioni come "povertà dickensiana" e personaggi iconici come Scrooge, che sono entrati nel linguaggio comune per descrivere situazioni di povertà estrema o persone avare.
Dickens ha introdotto innovazioni stilistiche come l'uso di nomi significativi, il montaggio parallelo e il primo piano, oltre a tecniche narrative come la suspense alla fine degli episodi per mantenere l'interesse dei lettori.
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