Dickens and Thackeray: Punishment and ForgivenessAttitudes toward punishment and forgiveness in English society of the nineteenth century came, for the most part, out of Christianity. In actual experience the ideal was not often met, but in the literature of the time the model was important. For novelists attempting to tell exciting and dramatic stories, violent and criminal activities played an important role, and, according to convention, had to be corrected through poetic justice or human punishment. Both Dickens' and Thackeray's novels subscribed to the ideal, but dealt with the dilemma it presented in slightly different ways. At a time when a great deal of attention has been directed toward economic production and consumption as the bases for value, Reed's well-documented study reviving moral belief as a legitimate concern for the analysis of nineteenth-century English texts is particularly illuminating. |
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... Dickens : The World of His Novels [ Cambridge : Harvard University Press , 1965 ] , 90 ) . 7. See William F. Axton's Circle of Fire : Dickens ' Vision and Style and the Popu- lar Victorian Theatre ( Lexington : University of Kentucky ...
... Dickens as a Serial Novelist ( Ames : Iowa University Press , 1967 ) , 108 . 14. Sylvère Monod details other clues to Jonas ' guilt and foreshadowings of his fate ( 98 ) . 15. Algernon Charles Swinburne , Charles Dickens ( London ...
... Dickens's Fable for His Time , ' Critical Essays on Charles Dickens's Great Expectations , ed . Michael Cotsell . Boston : G. K. Hall and Co. , 1990 , 63–72 . Stanley , Arthur Penrhyn . Addresses and Sermons Delivered at St. Andrew's in ...
Contents
Attitudes Toward Punishment and Forgiveness | 3 |
Some of the contents of this study appeared elsewhere in different form Mate | 28 |
Education | 30 |
Copyright | |
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