dickens talk
TRANSCRIPT
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The World of Charles Dickens
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Were on the move
Weve been in the Renaissance (1500 1650)
Next is the Neo-Classical Period (16601798)
Dryden
Defoe
Pope
Johnson Boswell
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On to
The Romantic Period (17981837)
Burns
Blake
Wordsworth
Coleridge Byron
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And then into
The Victorian Period (18371901)
Dickens Housman
Hardy
Thackery
Tennyson Browning (both)
Brontes (both)
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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
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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
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Dickens starts Publishing!
1836 -- Sketches by Boz
1837 -- ThePickwick Papers
and on a personal note...
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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...
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but, back to business!
1837-- Oliver Twistis serially published
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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
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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
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Two Constables
Flatford Lock and Mill 1812
The White Horse 1819
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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)
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And then
1838 --Nicholas Nickleby
1840 -- The Old Curiosity Shop
1841 --Barnaby Rudge
1842 --American Notes
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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
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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
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Is he done yet?
1859 --A Tale of Two Cities
1861 -- Great Expectations
1865 -- Our Mutual Friends
1869 -- The Mystery of Edwin Drood
(unfinished)
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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.
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Dickens Best
Bleak House
Little Dorrit
Great Expectations
Our Mutual Friend
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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.
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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.
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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
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More good works
He gave 16 public readings in 1858 to raise
money for the Hospital for Sick Children
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And in 1865 a key year
He published a novel (Our Mutual
Friends), got frostbite, and survived aterrible train crash
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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
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Westminster Abbey
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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.
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What about Oliver Twist?
Dickens wrote, I
wished to show in
little Oliver, theprinciple of Good
surviving through
every adverse
circumstance andtriumphing at last.
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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
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What to watch (out) for...
Use of irony
Use of coincidence
Use of humor
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Definitions, please
Situational irony = a discrepancy between
what the reader expects and what actuallyhappens
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Dickens Belief:
To be thoroughly
earnest is everything,
and to be anythingshort of it is nothing.