Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

1977

Keywords

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870, Criticism and interpretation, Grotesque in literature

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English, General Literature, and Rhetoric

First Advisor

Philip Rogers

Second Advisor

Gayle Whittier

Third Advisor

Paul Mattheisen

Abstract

The grotesque in Dickens’ works should be studied as a means of understanding his artistry and imagination. Biographical and psychoanalytical approaches to his fascination with the grotesque provide only partial explanations for Dickens‘ use of hyperbole, caricature, melodrama and the macabre. With the vocabulary and the insights afforded, by an understanding of the aesthetic of the grotesque, one can more fully define and appreciate Dickens‘ achievement.

Initially, I will establish the aesthetic category of the grotesque: its basic assumptions, characteristics, contexts and morality. The essential conclusion of this chapter is the basic duality of the grotesque and its comfort with incongrous contiguities.

Each of the remaining five chapters will focus on individual works of Dickens which best illustrate his characteristic uses of the grotesque. Chapter Two, centering on Sketches By Boz, will illustrate several of the characteristic propensities of the grotesque found in the later works: the animated landscapes and automated humans, the run—away improvisations of the sportive grotesque, the comfort with violence, the use of entertainment-world metaphors and assumptions, the delight in incongruities and the freedom from moral categories.

Pickwick Papers provides the clearest and most abundant evidence for Dickens‘ attraction to violence. Much of the humor in the novel arises through aggression of all sorts, from threats of duels to linguisitc byplay and anecdote. Sam Weller recapitulates these themes illustrating how, in the grotesque, pain and death become sources of humor.

Chapter Four, on The Old Curiosity Shop, relates the grotesque to various aspects of popular Victorian entertainment, especially to Clown, pantomome and Punch. After establishing Dickens‘ fascination with the theater and his first-hand knowledge of it, we will enjoy the entertaining spectacle of the showman in the novel, Quilp being their ring-leader and the most obvious illustration of the grotesque‘s immunity to moral labels.

Chapter Five will use Martin Chuzzlewit as a starting point to explore Dickens‘ frequent juxtaposition of birth and death, speaking as he often does, in the same breath of weddings and funerals. Sairy Gamp, the mid-wife and layeruout of dead bodies, the "cheery undertaker," "loose limbs," and unusual spatial and temporal contiguities will be examined.

Finally, in Chapter Six, I will examine the relationship of the grotesque to Dickens‘ artistry in order to show that much of the indifference to violence characteristic of the grotesque is basic to artistry and is native to the creative process. The focus of these remarks is Jenny Wren of Our Mutual Friend, who stands as an emblem of the grotesque's simultaneous aggression and appeal, and who, as an artist, suggests is the relationship of the grotesque to the creative process.

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