Charles Dickens狄更斯的英文介绍

发布时间：2018-06-27 13:11:13 来源：文档文库

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Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was a famous English critical realism novelist in the 19th century. “He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars.” With time going by, his novels and short stories continue to be widely popular. In his works, he paid special attention to the life of "little guy" at the bottom of society in the UK, which deeply reflected the complex social reality at that time.

LIFE AND CAREER

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, the second son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. He had a well-off family in his early years and was once educated in a private school for a period of time, but his parents often banqueted guests and used money without restraint. As a result, his father, inspiration for the character of Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, was imprisoned for bad debt when Charles Dickens was 10 years old. “The entire family, apart from Charles, was sent to Marshalsea along with their patriarch. Charles was sent to work in Warren's blacking factory and endured appalling conditions as well as loneliness and despair.” He worked over 10 hours every day. After three years, luckily, his father inherited a legacy of the family, so their economic conditions were improved. He was returned to school, but the experience was never forgotten and became fictionalized in two of his better-known novels David Copperfield and Great Expectations.

At the age of 15, he graduated from Wellington College, and then worked into a lawyer line. Later he turned to newspaper, becoming a reporter at the age of 20.

“Like many others, he began his literary career as a journalist. His own father became a reporter and Charles began with the journals The Mirror of Parliament and The True Sun. Then in 1833 he became parliamentary journalist for The Morning Chronicle. With new contacts in the press he was able to publish a series of sketches under the pseudonym 'Boz'. In April 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George Hogarth who edited Sketches by Boz. Within the same month, came the publication of the highly successful Pickwick Papers, and from that point on there was no looking back for Dickens.”

Besides a huge list of novels, “he published autobiography, edited weekly periodicals including Household Words and All Year Round, wrote travel books and administered charitable organizations. He was also a theatre enthusiast, wrote plays and performed before Queen Victoria in 1851. His energy was inexhaustible and he spent much time abroad - for example lecturing against slavery in the United States and touring Italy with companions Augustus Egg and Wilkie Collins, a contemporary writer who inspired Dickens' final unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

He was estranged from his wife in 1858 after the birth of their ten children, but maintained relations with his mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan.” However, too much hard work and disappointment at reform seriously impaired his health. He died of a stroke in 1870 and buried at Westminster Abbey. His tombstone wrote:“He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world.”

MAJOR WORKS

Dickens wrote many works in his life, and the followings are some of his most important novels. They can be divided into different periods.

From 1836 to 1841, it was the first period of youthful optimism. The major works are Sketches by Boz, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nichols Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop and so on. “Pickwick Papers (1836-37) was Dickens’ first big popular success, written when he was only twenty-four years old. It was issued in twenty monthly parts and is not so much a novel as a series of loosely linked sketches and changing characters featured in reports to the Pickwick Club. These episodes narrate comic excursions to Rochester, Dingley Dell, and Bath; duels and elopements; Christmas festivities; Mr Pickwick inadvertently entering the bedroom of a middle-aged lady at night; and in the end a happy marriage. Much light-hearted fun and a host of memorable characters are filled in this work. Oliver Twist (1837-38) expresses Dickens’ sense of the vulnerability of children. Oliver is a foundling, raised in a workhouse, who escapes suffering by running off to London. There he falls into the hands of a gang of thieves controlled by the infamous Fagin. He is pursued by the sinister figure of Monks who has secret information about him. The plot centres on the twin issues of personal identity and a secret inheritance (which surface again in Great Expectations). Emigration, prison, and violent death punctuate a cascade of dramatic events. This is the early Victorian novel in fine melodramatic form. It is recommended for beginners to Dickens.”

The second period of excitement and irritation expose the corrupting influence of wealth and power, optimism turned into dissatisfaction and irritation. David Copperfield (1849-50) is a thinly veiled autobiography, of which Dickens said ‘Of all my books, I like this the best’. As a child David suffers the loss of both his father and mother. He endures bullying at school and a life of poverty when he goes to work. he soon runs away to his Aunt Betsey Trotwood in Dover. Aunt Betsey adopts him and sends him to Dr. Strong's private school in Canterbury, where David meets his best friend Agnes Wickfield, as well as the slimy Uriah Heep. David grew up and became a lawyer, he fall in love with beautiful but childish Dora Spenlow. He marries Dora, despite her uselessness in household chores. However, Dora Spenlow soon falls ill and dies, leaving David single and heartbroken. David is very sad, and left his country. He travels throughout Europe, during which time he publishes his first novel with the help of old school-friend Thomas Traddles, and during this odyssey realizes he loves Agnes Wickfield. Upon his return he proposes to her, and the two quickly marry. They later move into a house in London along with their young children. The book is packed with memorable characters such as Mr. Micawber, the fawning Uriah Heep, and the earth-mother figure Clara Peggotty. The plot involves Dickens’ recurrent topics of thwarted romance, financial insecurity and misdoings, and the terrible force of the legal system which haunted him all his life.

The third period of intensifying (increasing) pessimism, showed underlying tone of bitterness, loss of hope for English bourgeois society. “A Tale of Two Cities (1859) was Dickens’ account of the French Revolution – with the story switching between London and Paris. It views the causes and effects of the Revolution from an essentially private point of view, showing how personal experience relates to public history. The characters are fictional, and their political activity is minimal, yet all are drawn towards the Paris of the Terror, and all become caught up in its web of suffering and human sacrifice. The novel features the famous scene in which wastrel barrister Sydney Carton redeems himself by smuggling the hero out of prison and taking his place on the scaffold.” The novel ends with the memorable lines: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known." Great Expectations (1860-61) traces the adventures and moral development of the young hero Pip as he rises from humble beginnings in a village blacksmith’s. Eventually, via good connections and a secret benefactor, he becomes a gentleman in fashionable London – but loses his way morally in the process and disowns his family. Fortunately he is surrounded by good and loyal friends who help him to redeem himself. Plenty of drama is provided by a spectacular fire, a strange quasi-sexual attack, and the chase of an escaped convict on the river Thames. There are a number of strange psycho-sexual features to the characters and events, and the novel has two subtly different endings – both adding ambiguity to the love interest between Pip and the beautiful Stella. There are other famous works in this period, such as Bleak House(1852-1853), Hard Times(1854) and so on.

STYLES

He has different writing styles in different periods. In his early period, the works are of gentle social criticism, Fantastic optimism, La novela picaresca and Exaggeration. In his middle period, the works are of vigorously criticizing on bourgeois and his morality, gentle moralism, humor and satire. At the same time, The plot and structure are more complete and unified. In his later period, the works are of social criticism, gentle reformism and strong humanitarian, exploration of man’s inner conflicts and symbolism

His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism. “Dickens was once a newspaper reporter so his descriptions show a wonderful eye for detail. Dickens loved words, and liked to produce a 'pretty piece of writing' in different styles. He included lots of powerful adjectives, and is famous for his use of metaphors and similes. His descriptions often present people, their surroundings, and even the weather, in ways which reinforce each other, so that certain 'feel' is built up through the passage. From the early 1850s, Dickens gave public readings of his novels. His writing is rhythmic and designed to be read out loud. He loved to make young women in his audience laugh or weep, so many of his characters are either hilariously comic or heart-broken sentimental. In addition, Dickens was also a master of dialect and used what is called 'substandard' speech to add to the picture of a character he was building up.”