英国文学导读 (44).pdf

Dickens – the greatest English realist Dickens’s life (1) Charles was exceptionally bright and articulate. (2) The boy had a little primary education. (3) At the age of 12, young Charles had to work at a shoe-blacking factory. (4) He became a Parliamentary reporter for newspapers.  Even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander desolately back to that time of my life.  Charles Dickens  A letter to his friend  “No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship; compared these henceforth everyday associates with those of my happier childhood - not to say with Steerforth, Traddles, and the rest of those boys; and felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man, crushed in my bosom.”  -- David Copperfield Dickens’s life  Dickens liked to stroll in the streets of London and was a careful observer – he published his first work Sketches by Boz, in 1836. Dickens’s literary career  The First Period (1836-1841):  Fun, high spirit, and a tendency even to literary boisterous play – alternating sometimes with spells of sentimentality – strikes the dominant note.  The Pickwick Papers –what makes Dickens become the most popular living novelist of his day  Oliver Twist  Nicholas Nickleby  The Old Curiosity Shop  Second Period (1842- 1850):  Dickens’s naïve optimism about capitalist society was thus profoundly shaken. His social criticism became deeper and more powerful.  Martin Chuzzlewit  The Chimes  Dombey and Son