DICKENS AND THE TRADITION OF COMEDY: A STUDY OF "PICKWICK PAPERS" AND "OUR MUTUAL FRIEND".
Item
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Title
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DICKENS AND THE TRADITION OF COMEDY: A STUDY OF "PICKWICK PAPERS" AND "OUR MUTUAL FRIEND".
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Identifier
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AAI8601625
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identifier
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8601625
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Creator
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BIRD, TOBY ANNE.
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Contributor
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Irving Howe
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Date
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1985
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English
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Abstract
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This study of Dickens and the tradition of comedy focusses on how Dickens uses comic techniques derived from the stage in his first novel, Pickwick Papers, and then in his last complete novel, Our Mutual Friend. In many ways these two novels represent opposite poles in Dickens' work. Pickwick is for the most part a comic picaresque novel in the eighteenth-century mode made up of many loosely connected episodes. Our Mutual Friend, on the other hand, is a much more realistic novel, with many comic moments and with a number of subplots all interconnected. In Pickwick Dickens draws on the traditional elements of comedy--the disguise, the pairing of trickster and gull, and the pairing of master and servant in order to dramatize the age-old comic preoccupation of "innocence buffeted by experience." In Our Mutual Friend, however, Dickens invests these comic techniques with symbolic resonance meant to suggest that deceit has corrupted all levels of society.;Part of Dickens' method is to exploit in both novels the two common and closely related meanings of the word "farce." One is "A theatrical composition in which broad improbabilities of plot and characterization are used for humorous effect." The other meaning is "Something ludicrous; an empty show, mockery." The first definition most accurately describes the theatrical world of Pickwick with its artifice, including broad improbabilities of plot. The second describes the "real" world of Our Mutual Friend. We are horrified by the empty show--the mockery that masquerades as humanity. Both novels exploit the double meaning of the word "farce," but the tone of each novel dictates the emphasis. Dickens uses the techniques of dramatic comedy in Pickwick to celebrate the cleverness of deceit. In Our Mutual Friend, however, he used the same techniques both to expose and to condemn deceit on all levels of society. The backdrop of nineteenth-century London causes us to see deceit in an entirely different light. For this reason Our Mutual Friend, a mixture of both artifice and realism, has a moral weight one cannot claim for Pickwick.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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English
