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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... present his story in balanced segments . We cannot relentlessly pursue Nell in her flight . To begin with , it would soon become wearing and perhaps even dull reading without some variation upon her adventures . Her pilgrimage is the ...
... present circumstances , and , in a familiar Thackerayan ploy , un- derscore the narrator's intimate relation with the mature Pendennis who is the present - day friend of the man who is composing his biography . A basic conven- tion of ...
... present to us . A glance at some examples of this practice from the early part of the novel may help to illuminate ... present kind , ” he is able to give conversations that took place outside the hearing of anyone who left records for ...
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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