scholarly journals An Attempt at Applying Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale on Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Khalid LAHLOU

The present paper is an attempt at approaching Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations from a morphological perspective based upon Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part is concerned with a brief view of the nature of formalism: its background and its process of analysis. The second part is devoted to putting into practice what has been dealt with in the first part. It will be mostly concerned with the question as to whether all the functions of dramatis personae as stated by Propp figure in the object of analysis, Great Expectations. Finally, the paper will draw the conclusion as to whether the aforementioned elements constitute an organic unity.

Text Matters ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 50-65
Author(s):  
Veronika Schuchter

Imagining super rich women in the real and fictional world has long been a struggle. Those few depictions that do exist are scattered across time periods and literary genres, reflecting the legal restrictions that, at different points in time, would not allow women to accumulate assets independent of the patriarchal forces in their lives. The scarcity of extremely wealthy women in literature and film is confirmed by Forbes magazine’s list of the fifteen richest fictional characters that features forty different fictional men and only nine women, with never more than two female characters nominated in a single year. This article explores the depiction of three exceptionally wealthy women: Cruella de Vil in The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956) by Dodie Smith, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens, and the figure of the stepmother in various adaptations of “Cinderella.” I demonstrate how the protagonists’ wealth allows them to manipulate others and disconnect themselves from patriarchal and societal expectations. Further, I argue that these affluent antagonists are “rogued” by their respective narratives, highlighting their perceived anti-feminine and emasculating behaviour resulting in a mode of narration that greedily gazes at and shames their appearances and supposed unattractiveness. While this genealogy of rich rogues reiterates the narrow scope of imagining wealthy women on the page and on the screen, there are moments in the narratives that disrupt stereotypical depictions of these wealthy characters who defy the labels imposed on them.


Author(s):  
Karin Kukkonen

The conclusion shows that several of the embodied aspects of writing fiction discussed for the eighteenth-century novel can be traced into the nineteenth century through an example from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. It is shown that, like the earlier authors in the case studies in this book, Dickens features shifting embodied stances and involves elements of the media ecology of his day rather than deploying the concrete particulars that “formal realism” considers central to the novel. Links to larger arguments about the role of the novel in literary history are then drawn in contrast with accounts, based on Adorno/Habermas and Benjamin, that argue that eighteenth-century fiction becomes rationalised and disembodied with the novel and its culture industry. Rather than impoverishing experience, it is argued that the novel as a lifeworld technology depends profoundly on readers’ embodied engagements and that 4E cognition is a critical perspective that affords such an alternative take.


1970 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-72
Author(s):  
Nicolaus C. Mills

With the exception of Sir Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper, no two British and American writers of the nineteenth century are compared as frequently as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. Yet, despite the far greater literary importance of Dickens and Twain, we are without a thorough understanding of the parallels in their work. Why does this problem exist? There are two basic reasons. The first lies in the thinness of Twain's comments on Dickens. If, to a modern critic like Ellen Moers, it is clear that Twain resembled Dickens in ‘the theatricality of his prose, the conception of the public as an audience of responsive listeners rather than as solitary readers, the episodic nature of his fiction cut to an oral rather than a literary measure’, to Twain himself it seemed unnecessary to make such an acknowledgement. In his fiction, as well as in his correspondence, Dickens's specific influence is at best marginal, and in his Autobiography he relegates Dickens to the position of the artist-innovator of the public reading.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. p17
Author(s):  
Farhana Haque

Charles Dickens’ Great Expectation actually did reflect the Victorian society and therefore the morality of that era’s people inside of the novel. Since we know that Victorian era basically present some features such as virtue, strength, thrift, manners, cleanliness, honesty and chastity. These are the morals that Victorian people used to hold with high esteem. In this novel Great Expectations, Dickens has created some Victorian characters whom we have seen both in good working way or not at all. But the protagonist named Pip was dynamic and he went through some several changes and dealt with different and significant moral issues. Somehow Pip left behind all the values he was raised with. Because Miss Havisham and Estella have corrupted Pip with rich life. Greed, beauty and arrogance were his ingredient of immoral life. The other characters like Joe and Biddy were static characters throughout the entire novel and became noticeable to be the manifestation of what we call as ideal Victorians. The main heroin of this novel was Estella with whom Pip thought he had some love connection. Hence, Estella has been presented as a good in the sense of potentiality and turned morally bad. Miss Havisham, who was basically a corrupt woman and she engraved the center of the novel. Great Expectations did disclose how was the situation of Victorian society through some important features such as higher class, corrupted judicial system between rural and urban England. Here in this novel, Dickens was concern about the education system in Victorian era where the lower class people get less opportunities of getting proper education. From the beginning to the end of this novel, Dickens explored some significant issues regarding higher and lower class system of Victorian society which did fluctuate from the greatest woeful criminal named Magwitch to the needy people of the swamp country, where Joe and Biddy were the symbol of that regime. After that we can proceed to the middle class family where Pumblechook was the person to represent that regime. Last but not the least Miss Havisham symbolized and bear flag of very rich and sophisticated Victorian woman who has represented the higher class society in the novel Great Expectations. Hence we can say Great Expectations has talked and displayed the class system of Victorian England and the characters of this novel therefore also did uphold the true reflection of Victorian era.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. p49
Author(s):  
Despoina PANOU

This paper aims to investigate the norms governing the translation of fiction from English into Greek by critically examining two Greek translations of Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations. One is by Pavlina Pampoudi (Patakis, 2016) and the other, is by Thanasis Zavalos (Minoas, 2017). Particular attention is paid to dialect translation and special emphasis is placed on the language used by one of the novel’s prominent characters, namely, Abel Magwitch. In particular, twenty instances of Abel Magwitch’s dialect are chosen in an effort to provide an in-depth analysis of the dialect-translation strategies employed as well as possible reasons governing such choices. It is argued that both translators favour standardisation in their target texts, thus eliminating any language variants present in the source text. The conclusion argues that societal factors as well as the commissioning policies of publishing houses influence to a great extent the translators’ behaviour, and consequently, the dialect-translation strategies adopted. Hence, greater emphasis on the extra-linguistic, sociological context is necessary for a thorough consideration of the complexities of English-Greek dialect translation of fiction.


2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95-135
Author(s):  
Irena Avsenik Nabergoj

This article deals with literary depictions of social, political, cultural and religious circumstances in which children who have lost one or both parents at birth or at a later age have found themselves. The weakest members of society, the children looked at here are exposed to dangers, exploitation and violence, but are fortunate enough to be rescued by a relative or other sympathetic person acting out of benevolence. Recognizing that the relationship between the orphaned child, who is in mortal danger, and a rescuer, who most frequently appears unexpectedly in a relationship, has been portrayed in narratives throughout the ages and that we can therefore speak of it as being an archetypal one, the article focuses especially on three novels by Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist (1837–1839), David Copperfield (1849–1850) and Great Expectations (1860–1861) – and in Fugitive Pieces (1996) by Canadian writer Anne Michaels. Charles Dickens earned the reputation of a classic writer through his original literary figures of orphaned children in the context of the rough capitalism of the Victorian era of the 19th century. Such originality also distinguishes Anne Michaels, whose novel Fugitive Pieces portrays the utterly traumatic circumstances that a Jewish boy is exposed to after the Germans kill his parents during the Holocaust. All the central children’s lives in these extreme situations are saved by generous people, thus highlighting the central idea of both selected authors: that evil cannot overcome good. Rescuers experience their selfless resolve to save extremely powerless and unprotected child victims of violence from life-threatening situations as a self-evident moral imperative. Through their profound and deeply experienced descriptions of memories of traumas successfully overcome by central literary figures in a spirit of compassion and solidarity, Charles Dickens and Anne Michaels have left testaments of hope against hope for future generations.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Askar Nur

This research discusses about culture reproduction in the Charles Dickens’ novel “Great Expectations” and aims to find out the process of culture reproduction in the novel Great Expectations. The researcher used culture reproduction (habitus and field concept) theory of Pierre-Felix Bourdieu. This research focuses on culture reproduction occurred in Great Expectations. The data were analyzed using a descriptive qualitative method to identify, describe and analyze the data that found in the novel Great Expectations. The researcher used coding sheet as the instrument to find out the valid data. This research conducted to answer the problems that concerning how the culture reproduction occurred in the novel. The findings show that there are some phenomena which supported the process of culture reproduction occurred according to Bourdieu, as following the phenomena of culture reproduction in the old and new culture based on habitus and field concept and its dialectical relation. The researcher concludes that the dialectical relation between old and new habitus, the old and new arena (field) or between unwillingness to return to old life and also unwillingness to live in new life makes Pip get in a new phase of life by bringing his old culture and current culture.


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