The Romantic Spirit In Reality

Charles Dickens is one of the greatest British novelists in 19^thcentury.His novels expose inefficiency of British bureaucracies,the life of the back slums,child labor system,the darkness of private schools and etc.He holds the lofty moral ideals: protesting unfairness of the society,calling on social reform and helping the people get rid of the extreme miseries.Therefore,Dickens is usually defined by scholars as the greatest representative of critical realist in British literary history for a long time. But literature is a special social ideology and reflects the social existence.It not only has the moral function,but also aesthetic function.Dickens' studies should not be limited on his exposing and criticizing the evil social reality,and it is necessary to understand his peculiar characteristics and artistic techniques.Victorian novels generally are labeled as realistic works,but there are historical limitations in these novels.Dickens' novel is not an exception and he himself is limited by his class position and viewpoint.However,Dickens is an instinctive Romantic,full of imagination.He absorbs romantic thoughts from Rousseau, Wordsworth,Blake and other Romanticists;he creates works with romantic characteristics.Romanticism,as a literary movement,is most widespread in influence and of profound significance.Throughout the Victorian period the wild,passionate, erotic,even destructive aspects of Romanticism continue in all the arts evidently. Great Expectations,one of Dickens' last mature works,intensely reflects his assimilation and employment of the common culture.This essay firstly deals with Dickens' critical ideas of the novel,which is viewed as a foil to his Romantic sensibility.Then it tells the rise and features of Romanticism,focusing on the novel Great Expectations to deeply illustrate its Romantic legacy.It mainly examines following aspects:the relation of man to nature including the Rousseauesque Noble Savages---Joe and Biddy,the Wordsworthian nature descriptions and the journey of Pip's return to nature;the relation of children to nature such as Wordsworthian accounts of the childhood development and Pip's Romantic childhood;romantic love of Pip and Estella and their happy ending,the grotesqueness in Great Expectations.In addition,this thesis explores the different writing techniques between Charles Dickens' and William Makepeace Thackeray's.To a certain degree,Thackeray is an anti-Romantic novelist,yet Dickens is a Romantic.These parts from different points push forward the theme,reinforcing one upon the other.Lastly,as a conclusion,the essay discusses the importance of Dickens' Romantic sensibility and claims that such genius is exclusive to Charles Dickens.Dickens' works explore the dark side of the society;he himself is full of miseries and sympathetic with the poor people.However, he is endowed with romantic temperament and his works is imbued with romantic feelings to greatly alleviate the discomfort of the realistic descriptions which readers should bear.His novels allow a presentation of reality wide enough to include romantic values and fancies as part of the whole pictures.It deepens our understanding of Dickens' thoughts and widens the research on his artistic techniques.