CONTENTS Introduction……………………………………………………………….….3 1.The role of critical realism in english literature of 19 century……………4 2.Charled dickens life and his critical works………………………………...18 3.The importance of critical works nowadays…………………………….…28 Conclusion……………………………………………………………….…...30 Glossary…………………………………………………………….…….…..31 References…………………………………………………………….……...32 In the XIX century British imperialism was on the rise. The socio-economic contradictions were most severe. Gradually the working class became aware of their strength. The movement for the worker's political rights known as Chartism1 broke out. It was an immensely complex age. This is how the English communist critic, Ralph Fox, characterized it: "This was the period of the workhouses, the Hungry Forties, the Chartist strikes .. It was the period of the worship oi money and success."
Most writers of the XIX century were critical realists. They showed a realistic picture of their contemporary England. In their works they reflected the class division of society, the exploitation of the poor by the rich, social injustice and the struggle of workers against oppression. Karl Marx called Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte the glorious school" of English novelists whose descriptions revealed to the world more political and social truths than did all the politicians, publicists and moralists added together. Here belong, of course, many other writers, George Eliot, and Emily Bronte, for instance. All these novelists portrayed every-day life, with a little man for the central character.
CHARLES DICKENS
(1812—1870)
In most ways Charles Dickens ['dikinz] was the greatest novelist that England produced in the XIX century. He was born in Portsmouth ['po:tsma9] where his father, John Dickens, was a clerk in the Navy Pay office. After a short period in London John Dickens was transferred to Chatham ['tjffitam]. Years later Charles Dickens, already a famous writer, returned to live to Chatham where he had spent the happiest years of his boyhood. John Dickens again moved to London when Charles was nine. The boy did not go to school there. He went to work in a blacking warehouse: his father was in debt and the family was large. Soon John Dickens was arrested and sent to the debtors' prison. His wife and the younger children joined him there. The twelve-year-old Charles had to feed himself. He went to school only after his father had been released from prison.
In 1827 he became an office boy in a solicitor's firm and filled up the gaps in his education by reading at the British Museum. The eager, bright and sensitive youth found the law dull, but he absorbed much of its atmosphere and background which he later on depicted in his novels.
John Dickens, pensioned off by the Admirality, learned shorthand and became a parliamentary reporter. His son Charles followed suit. The young man was soon recognized to be one of the best reporters in the whole country. He was invited to join several papers. The young reporter's power of observation and memory were phenomenal and provided him with material for his fiction.
In 1835 Charles Dickens published a collection of stories and sketches of London life entitled "Sketches by Boz"1. The work was warmly received.
Dickens first caught his readers by making them laugh. In "Posthumous2 Papers of the Pickwick Club" (1836—1837) he seems to see things in an amusing and exaggerated way. The author describes one adventure after another. The plot is loose based on a succession of events. He draws character after character rejoicing in the language he puts in their mouths. The world of Pickwick is the world of fairy-tales in which the miseries of the real world are sterilized by humour. Long before the last number of the paper with "Pickwick Papers" came out England was Pickwick-mad. Dickens became famous all over the world,
His next novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" (1838) was a different work. Fairy-land had become a terrible dream. There
Dickcns's pen name; a nursery name of a brother
happening after death was laughter but very different in aim and kind from that of "Pickwick Papers". Now Dickens was satirical and sarcastic.
With "Nicholas Nickleby" (1839) Dickens showed his talent for the melodramatic. Dickens appeared not only as an entertainer, but also as a great novelist. His success cut across all social classes. Reading him people discovered what they thought and felt of the great social problems which confronted them. They called him "the master of our sunniest smiles and our most unselfish tears". The book deals with the problem of education of children in English private schools for poor children. The scenes of the children's life were so realistic and true to life that a school reform was carried out in England after the publication of the book,
"The Old Curiosity Shop" (1841) and Dickens's first historical novel "Barnaby Rudge" (1841) were published before his visit to America. After his return from America Dickens wro.te "American Notes" (1842) and "Martin Chuzzlewit (1843—1844) which created a sensation in America. They were social satires of the American way of life.
Between 1843 and 1848 Dickens published his "Christmas Books" ("A Christmas Carol", "The Chimes", "The Cricket on the Hearth"). In 1846 he visited Switzerland and Italy. There he began "Dombey and Son", (1848). "David Copperfield" (1850) and "Bleak House" (1853) were followed by "Hard Times" in 1854. While in all his works Dickens attacks the social conditions of his time, in "Hard Times" he gives this theme a special emphasis. He shows capitalist exploitation, the contradictions between workers and manufacturers as well as the beginning of the struggle between the proletariat and the capitalists. Dickens is against bad and cruel capitalists but he is not against the capitalist system as such, he is for reconciliation between the two classes. The second theme of the novel is the system of education. The "theory of fact", the wrong way of bringing up and educating children ruin their life.
The portrayal of the debtors' prison in "Little Dorrit" (1857) makes the reader realise that society itself is only another and much larger prison.
With "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859) Dickens returned to the historical novel and laid his theme in the French Revolution.
He completed his other two novels "Great Expectations" (1861) and "Our Mutual Friend" (1864—1865) before his death and left unfinished the manuscript of "The Mystery of'Edwin Drood".
From 1858 to 1868 Dickens gave dramatic readings of his novels in England and America. They were profitable and he was a brilliant reader of his novels but he overworked and died at the age of fifty-eight. The writer had hoped to be buried in the quiet local graveyard, but he was buried in Westminster Abbey.[1]
Thousands of people streamed past his grave for several days. England deeply mourned for her greatest novelist.
