An Analysis Of Romantic Colouring In Charles Dickens’ Three Novels:Oliver Twist, David Copperfield And A Tale Of Two Cities

Charles Dickens is generally considered one of the greatest British realistic novelists in the nineteenth century. With diligence and talent, Dickens wrote fourteen novels, many novellas, short stories, essays, travel notes and dramas in his life. He lived in the period of transition from the semi feudal society to the industrial capitalist society, so his works revealed extensively and profoundly all aspects of social life in this period as well as described clearly and vividly the representatives of each class. He often told the truth about the world in the romance and the reality with humorous and exaggerated language, and was famous for his witty humor, nuanced psychological analysis in the art, and his combination between realistic description and romantic atmosphere.Among the Dickens’fourteen novels, three works clearly showed the romantic colouring. They are Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities. Oliver Twist was published as the first moving social novels of Dickens in1838. David Copperfield which is a semi-autobiographical novel in the works of Dickens was published by means of monthly installment from April1849to November1850. A Tale of Two Cities occupies a special place among Dickens’ novels and can reflect the development of the author’s thoughts along with a deeper and broader spirit of the times. In the three works, the development of storyline is the process of criticizing the reality, but emphasis on nature, coincidence of the plot, the happy ending, distinctive characters and humorous exaggerated language as the romantic style in practical writing, actually reflects the author’s ideal to the society which he exposed.This thesis uses Dickens’ three novels as examples and takes romanticism as the theoretical basis to analyze Dickens’ romantic colouring. In describing social reality, Dickens made his works full of his romantic thoughts with very rich, passionate, creative imagination. In his works, Dickens stressed the awe of nature, created many vivid characters, used individualized language, and designed the ingenious plots. These have fully demonstrated that Dickens, as a very important realistic novelist, fully inherited and carried forward the traditional romantic techniques, and moreover, showed the obviously romantic tendency in his works. The undercurrent of romanticism, which has been surging in his heart and running through his works, makes his works full of passion and ideal, and at the same time, constantly evokes people’s distinct love and hate, and the pursuit for the bright future.