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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... writing ) . We wish Sir Robert Peel joy of his Young England friends ; and , admiring fully the vivid correctness of Mr. Disraeli's description of this great Conservative party , which conserves nothing , which pro- poses nothing ...
... writing in various disciplines . What makes Thackeray's narrators so interest- ing is their reluctance to claim that they represent full literal truth , while nonetheless aiming to convey a larger moral truth . Laura Fasick has examined ...
... writing against convention in Philip , but , as Peter Rabinowitz observes , " No matter how much a writer wishes to play with conventions . . . he or she can do so only if the readers share those conventions to begin with . Indeed , the ...
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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