-
西安石油大学外语系本科论文
An Analysis of
Image in
David Copperfield
Chapter
1
Introduction
up
to
the
longest
of
a
semi-autobiographical
work,
in
May
1849
to
November
1850
installment was
published. In the preface, Dickens said:
this department. ... It is my favorite
child.
This paper began with a brief
introduction of the author and the social
background, and
then it tried to
analyze the novel. Thus the author paved the way
for the following analysis,
then
it
came
to
the
essential
part
of
the
paper
—
the
analysis
of
image
in
David,
Dora,
David
’
s great-
aunt, er, and Steerforth, The Mr. Murdstones,
Heep.
Next,
the
essay
came
to
the
author
’s
imp
act
on
the
two
figures
in
order
to
make
readers know more about
the novel and the author. Finally, the author
attempted to analyze
different
people
’
s image and
show
people
’
s
different
destinies. The paper wanted
to
tell
people that maybe
fate is unfair to you, so that you are suffering
from human sufferings,
but you cannot
do anything without the goodness of heart and you
must fight for your own
destiny.
And
stressed: only love can give courage to face the
misery and suffering.
David and
Steerforth were two different images that have
great differences. Such as
kind-hearted
fisherman
Peggotty
and
David,
despite
a
poor
family,
didn
’
t
receive
education,
but
to
hold
an
honest
and
good
heart,
while
rich
Steerforth
was
an
invalid
character in stark contrast.
At
the
same
time,
it
reflected
Dickens'
own
morality:
goes
around
comes
around
Such
as
a
symbol
of
evil
Heap
and
Steerforth
has
been
duly
punished;
kind-
hearted people have
found a popular destination that they
were dreamed to
come all the
time.
1.1 The
introduction to the author
Dickens was
the main representative of realism literature of
the 19th century. The art
of
witty
words,
nuanced
psychological
analysis
and
realism
were
combined
together
closely.
He
was
particularly
famous
for
his
vivid
comic
characterizations
and
social
1
西安石油大学外语系本科论文
criticism. He was the first author who
had written of the poor with fidelity and
sympathy.
His works were famous during
novels of the Victorian age and among the great
classics in
all fiction.
Dickens
was born in February, 1812, at Landport,
Portsmouth. He was the second of
eight
children. His father was a clerk, hardworking but
imprudent, later caricatured as Mr.
Micawber in
David
Copperfield.
In 1822, the family moved
to London, where Charles had
to leave
school to help support his impoverished family. In
1824, his father was put into
prison
for
debt.
At
the
age
of
12,
Dickens
was
sent
to
going
to
work
at
a
factory.
He
wrapped and labeled for 6 shillings a
week. After work, he wandered through the streets
of
London, enthralled by the sight of
the dockyards, the files of convicts, and vast
sections of
the city inhabited by the
poor. These bitter days remained in his memory and
later found
expression in his
works.
Dickens was able to return to school after a small
legacy helped release his father from
prison.
He
was
an
avid
reader
and
spent
much
time
in
the
reading
room
of
the
British
Museum
and
learnt
short-hand.
Although
he
later
returned
to
school
for
a
time,
this
experience left a permanent mark on the
soul of Charles Dickens. Even many years later,
after he had become a successful
author, he could not bear to talk about it, or be
reminded
of his
family
’
s ignominy.
At the age of fifteen Dickens began
working as an office boy for a law firm. He taught
himself
and
by
1828
he
became
a
reporter
for
courts
of
Doctors
’
Common.
The
dull
routine of the legal profession never
interested him, so he became a newspaper reporter
for
the
Mirror
of
parliament
,
the
True
Sun
,
and
finally
for
the
Morning
Chronicle.
(John
Forster, were later his closest friend
and biographer, was also employed at the
True Sun.)
By the
age of twenty, Dickens was one of the best
parliamentary reporters in all England.
During
this
same
period
Dickens
’
s
interest
began
to
switch
from
journalism
to
literature. His first work of fiction,
“
Dinner at Poplar
Walk
”(
later reprinted as
“
Mr. Minns
and
His
Cousin
”
),
appeared
in
the
Monthly
Magazine
when
he
was
twenty-one.
His
newspaper
work
had
given
him
an
intimate
knowledge
of
the
streets
and
by
ways
of
London,
and late in 1832 he began writing sketches and
stories of London life. They began
to
appear
in
periodicals
and
newspapers
in
1833
and
in
1836
were
gathered
together
as
sketches by Boz,
Illustrations of Everyday life, and Everyday
People.
2
西安石油大学外语系本科论文
By
this time, Dickens was enjoying the luxurious life
he had dreamed of as a child. In
1850,
he
published
the
last
installments
of
David
Copperfield,
a
partly
autobiographical
novel that was his favorite.
In 1858 Dickens's twenty-three-year
marriage to Catherine Hogarth dissolved when he
fell in
love with
Ellen Ternan, a
young
actress.
The
the last
years of his
life were
filled
with
intense
activities:
writing,
taking
part
in
management,
and
undertaking
tours
that
reinforced
the
public's
favorable
view
of
his
work,
which
took
an
enormous
toll
on
his
health. Working feverishly to the last,
Dickens collapsed and died on June 8, 1870,
leaving
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
uncompleted.
1.2 The introduction to
the background
1.2.1 Social Background
Like
so
many
parents
I
have
in
my
heart
of
hearts
a
favorite
child,
wrote
Charles
Dickens.
life
experience
to
attack
the
social
evils
of
the
time,
the
miseries
of
child-labour,
the
tyranny
in
schools,
the
debtors
’
prison,
as
well
as
the
cruelty
and
immortality
and
the
treachery
that
were
prevalent
in
Victorian
England.
Thus
the
novel
was
not
merely
a
personal record, but a
broad picture of the society of the
author
’
s day.
David
Copperfield
(also
called
The
Personal
History
and
Experience
of
David
Copperfield the
Younger
), was published in monthly
installments between 5. 1849 and 11.
1850. An edition was published near the
end of 1850.
David
Copperfield
was a novel written in
first-person point of view. It was sometimes
referred to as an apprenticeship novel
because it centered on the period in which a young
person
grows
up
–
that
is,
serves
his
apprenticeship.
The
type
of
novel
was
pioneered
by
Johann
Wolfgang
von
Goethe
(1749-1832)
in
his
novel
Wilhelm
Meisters
Lehrjahre
(
Wilhelm Meister's
Apprenticeship).
An apprenticeship
novel could also be identified by its
German
name,
meaning
novel
(
roman
)
of
educational
development
(
buildings
).
Dickens
based the book in
part on the difficult early years of his own life.
The narration changed
names,
locales,
and
other
details
of
Dickens’s
life
but
maintained
its
general
tenor.
For
example, when Dickens was only a child,
he had to leave school to work in a factory that
polished
some
shoes.
In
the
novel,
David
Copperfield
has
to
leave
school
to
work
in
a
warehouse washing and
labeling bottles used in the wine trade. David’s
initials (D.C.)
were,
of
course, the reverse of Dickens’s
(C.D.).
3
西安石油大学外语系本科论文
Dickens
was
a
master
at
drawing
memorable
characters.
Some
were
simple
and
uncomplicated, like
Barkis, Creakle, Murdstone, and Clara Peggotty.
Others were complex,
like
David
Copperfield.
Throughout
the
novel,
he
befriended
the
wealthy
and
charming
James
Steerforth,
ignoring
his
devious
and
malevolent
side.
At
the
same
time,
he
befriended
the
good-hearted
Tommy
Traddles
and
the
humble
Peggottys.
These
two
worlds
–
the world
of Steerforth and the world of the people
Steerforth and his family look
down
upon
–
both
attract
David,
and
part
of
his
maturation
was
deciding
what
should
constitute
his
own
world.
To
bring
his
characters
to
life,
Dickens
invested
them
with
clearly
defining
virtues
or
vices
and
describing
the
characters
in
a
way
that
enabled
the
reader to picture them
and the scenes in which they appear.
1.2.2 Novel’s Background
Of
all the Dickens’
novels,
David Copperfield reflects the
events of Dickens own life
the most.
David
’
s early suffering was
adequately compensated with a rich, happy marriage
and a successful literary career, just
like Dickens himself, and the world is still full
of hope
and
sunshine.
The
plot
construction
was
rather
loose,
but
it
also
excelled
in
its
vivid
characterization. The
novel
’
s detailed narration
was also worth mentioning, which gave the
work a truthfulness to the real life.
The
early
success
with
the
public
not
only
gave
Dickens
an
assurance
that
led
to
increased
powers of poetic expression and narrative
technique, but also the confidence to
assert his thematic priorities to a
point where they contradicted the social
assumptions of
many of his readers. All
his later novels, except A Tale of Two Cities,
present a criticism
of the most
fundamental institutions of the Victorian England.
Although
David
wa
s
ignorant
of
Steerforth’s
treachery,
we
were
aware
from
the
moment we met Steerforth
that he did
n’t
deserve of
praise which David feels toward him.
David did
n’t
know
why he hated Heep or why he trusted a boy with a
donkey cart who
stole
his
money
and
left
him
in
the
road,
but
it
was
possible
for
him
to
realize
Heep
’s
inherent
evil
and
the
boy’s
real
intention
.
In
David’s
first
-person
narration,
Dickens
conveyed the wisdom of the older man
implicitly, through the eyes of a child.
The novel began in the early 19th
Century (presumably in 1812, the year of Dickens's
birth) in Blunderstone, a fictional
name for a real town, Blundeston, which Dickens
visited.
It
was in eastern
England in
the county
of
Suffolk.
Other
cities in
which action
was set
were London, Canterbury, Yarmouth,
Dover, and Highgate, suburbs of London. Near the
end of the novel, David visited
Switzerland, and the Peggottys and Micawbers
traveled to
4
西安石油大学外语系本科论文
Australia. (However, neither the Swiss
nor the Australian locales actually appeared in
the
novel.).
Somewhere
about
the
middle
of
the
serial
publication
of
David
Copperfield,
happening to be out of writing-paper,
he sallied forth one morning to get a fresh supply
at
the stationer's. He was living then
in his favorite haunt, at Fort House, in
Broadstairs. As
he
was
about
to
entering
the
stationer's
shop,
with
the
intention
of
buying
the
needful
writing-paper, for
the purpose of returning home with it, and at once
setting to work upon
his next number,
not one word of which was yet written, he stood
aside for a moment at the
threshold to
allow a lady to pass in before him. When it was
handed by her,
the month.
was there, and remembering that not one
word of the number she was asking for was yet
written, for the first and only time in
my life, I felt
—
frightened!<
/p>
as
a
Reader,
pp.
45-46).
Many
of
his
novels,
particularly
the
later
ones,
required
meticulously
plotting
in
advance,
but
David
Copperfield
unfolds
relatively
simply
—
perhaps
because it relied in part on events of Dickens's
own experience, with which he was
naturally
familiar,
but
also
because
its
first-person
voice
dictated
an
omniscient
third-
person narrator, and
coincidences characters, could provide. In his
next novel, Bleak House,
Dickens would
combine these approaches in two distinct narrative
strands; the result is a
structurally
complex work whose denouement links an aristocrat
with the lowliest of street-
sweepers
and touches on every social class between. But the
world of David Copperfield,
with
the
exception
of
the
scene
of
David's
birth
(the
facts
of
which
he
relays
on
good
authority
of eyewitnesses), is limited to David's
own recollections of events in which he
plays a part, and the fabric of society
is likewise limited to David's personal
acquaintance.
5
西安石油大学外语系本科论文
Chapter 2
2.
Literature Review of the Novel
2
.1 Some scholars’ views on
the novel
Scholars believe that David
Copperfield's careers, friendships, and love life
were most
highly influenced by Dickens'
experiences, as well as his time working as a
child. David's
involvement with the law
profession and later his career as a writer mirror
the experiences
of
Dickens.
Many
of
David's
friends
are
based
on
people
Dickens
actually
knew,
and
David's
wives,
Agnes
Wickfield
and
Dora,
are
believed
to
be
based
upon
Dickens'
attachment to Mary
Hogarth. Dickens keenly felt his lack of education
during his time at
that factory, and
according to the Forster biography, it was from
these times that he drew
David's
working period.
British
writer Somerset Maugham as
One of
American literature connoisseurs recommends one
hundreds of the 20th century,
distinguishing English novel.
and
originality,
noted
Somerset
Maugham.
are
not
realistic
and
yet
they
abound
with
life. There never were such people as the
Micawbers, Pegotty and Barkis, Traddles,
Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick, Uriah
Heep and his mother.
The story is
told almost
entirely from the point of
view of the
first
person
narrator,
David
Copperfield
himself,
and
was
the
first
Dickens
novel
to
do
s
based
the
book in part on the difficult early
years of his own life.
2
.2
Main Views of Dickens’ idea
Influenced by Carlyle, Dickens learned,
as did his literary contemporaries, to direct
his fiction to a questioning of social
priorities and inequalities, to a distrust of
institutions,
particularly
defunct
or
malfunctioning
ones,
and
to
a
pressing
appeal
for
action
and
earnestness.
He
was
prone
to
take
up
issues,
and
to
campaign
against
what
he
saw
as
injustice
or desuetude, using fiction as his vehicle. He was
not alone in this in his own time,
but
his name continues to be popularly associated with
good causes and with remedies for
social abuses because he was quite the
wittiest, and he have had the most persuasive, and
the
most
influential
voice.
Dickens
was
faithful
to
the
teaching,
and
to
the
general
theological
framework,
of
Christianity
as
a
moral
basis
for
his
thought,
his
action
and
above
all,
for
his
writing,
nevertheless.
A
critical
awareness
that
there
was
something
6
西安石油大学外语系本科论文
deeply wrong
with
the society in
which he
lived sharpened the nature of his
fiction
and
gave
it
its
distinct
political
edge.
Dickens’
novels
are
multifarious,
digressive
and
humorous.
In an important
way, they reflect the nature of Victorian urban
society
with all its
conflicts
and
disharmonies,
its
eccentricities
and
its
constrictions,
its
energy
and
its
extraordinary fertility,
both physical and intellectual. But the standard
pattern in his novels
is
the
basic
conflict
between
money
on
the
one
hand,
and
loves
on the
other.
What
this
conflict usually reveals is that the
people who have greatest love for their fellow
humans
are
also
the
ones
who
are
most
hurt
by
the
world
of
money,
simply
because
money
is
power. In his novels, the people who
possess most money and most power seem incapable
of
love,
whereas
the
people
who
are
capable
of
love
are
very
often
both
poor
and
powerless. And yet, this
gloomy view is counteracted by
Dickens’
comic
way of dealing
with
his characters.
7
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
上一篇：英国文学人物分析
下一篇：大学英语四级听力材料及答案.doc