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The Condition of England Novel

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Course tutor: Dr. Adrian Radu

Office: M12

Email: aradu@lett.ubbcluj.ro

Web: www.lett.ubbcluj.ro/~aradu

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The Condition of England Novels

Industrial Novels Condition of England Novels (Carlyle in ‘Chartism’) or

Industrial Novels (Raymond Williams in Culture andSociety), which

They treat the problems arising out of the IndustrialRevolution and discuss the state of the nation:

Charles Dickens’s Hard Times,

Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, Mrs Gaskell’s Mary Barton and North and South

Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil .

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Charles Dickens (1812-1870) one of the most popular

 writers one of the most comic of

English writers

readership from all walks

of society  talked about poor and

miserable people withsympathy and compassion

great creator of characters novels are in many cases

moral parables

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Works first book: Sketches by Boz (1836)

comic serial narrative to accompany some engravings –

Pickwick Papers (1836) Oliver Twist (1837-1839) in instalments – debate about

 workhouse

 Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839) about the horrors and

brutality of the school system

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 Martin Chuzzlewitt (1843-1844), - pictures of America

 A Christmas Carol (1843) – a Christmas book

David Copperfield (1849-1850) – based on Dickens’s life

Bleak House (1852-1853) about the legal system in histime

Hard Times (1854)

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Great Expectations (1860-1861) is based on Dickens’ sautobiographical experience

the novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), adetective novel, was left unfinished

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Assessment his novels are fables about the good and the evil and

their purpose is obviously to educate

he uses elements of the detective novel, parallelisms,

sensational incidents,melodrama, etc.

he deals chiefly with the life of the middle and lowerclasses of society 

his novels are filled with humour, grotesqueness andpathos.Dickens: satirical – satire associated with caricatureThackeray: sarcastic and ironic

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his characters are often depicted in a funny way butalways with sympathy 

Dickens’s criticism is commonly directed againstinstitutions and not individuals.

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