CHARLES DICKENS & OLIVER TWIST

CHARLES DICKENS

1812-1870

WORKS

STYLE & THEMES

LIFE

• Repetitions of words and expressions.
• Effective language.
• Juxtapositions of images and ideas.
• Exaggerations and ironic remarks.
• Family.
• Childhood.
• Poverty.

• Sketches by Boz.
• The Pickwick Papers.
• Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit (symbols of an exploited childhood).
• Bleak House, Hard Times, Great Expectations (conditions of the poor and the working class).

• Unhappy childhood.
• Put to work at 12 y/o.
• Reporter for newspapers under the pseudonym of Boz.
• Full-time career as novelist and journalistic and editorial activities.

AIM

REPUTATION

CHARACTERS & SETTING

• Lower orders.
• Industrial cities, especially London.
• Parochial world.
• Criminal world.
• Victorian middle class.
• Slum districts.

Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist in the English language.

Underline:

• the faults of legal system;
• horrors of factory employment;
• scandals in private schools;
• miseries of prostitution;
• corruption.

OLIVER TWIST

THE PROTAGONIST

1838

CHARACTERS & SETTING

• The orphan Oliver Twist.
• Innocent, pure and incorruptible child.
• Brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way.
• Enrolled in criminal gang.
• Sved by a well-to-do family.

THE NOVEL

• Lower orders.
• Industrial city: London.
• Parochial world.
• Criminal world.
• Victorian middle class.
• Slum districts.

Autobiographical novel. Symbol of an exploited childhood confronted with the bitter realities of slums and factories.

condemning:poverty, the world of workhouses, the criminal world.