Charles Dickens and His Oliver Twist 狄更斯与雾都孤儿.docVIP

Charles Dickens and His Oliver Twist 查尔斯 狄更斯与《雾都孤儿》 【关键词】查尔斯 狄更斯；《雾都孤儿》；批判现实主义者;批判现实主义 【摘要】查尔斯 狄更斯是英国文学史上杰出的现实主义作家。雾都孤儿是他的代表作之一。小说描写了伦敦底层社会中贫苦儿童的悲惨生活，揭露了贫民救济所的黑暗。他所塑造的任务，在今天读来仍栩栩如生。 Key Words: Charles Dickens; Oliver Twist; critical realist; critical realism Abstract: Charles Dickens was one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age. Oliver Twist was one of his masterpieces in reflecting the real and terrible life of the workhouse and underworld in the nineteenth-century London. Charles Dickens Historical background of Realism Period (1832-1900) The Realism Period is also called Victorian Period, because it roughly coincides with the reign of Queen Victorian (1837-1901) chronologically. The early years of the Victorian England was a time of rapid economic development as well as serious social problems. The Industrial Revolution geared up. Scientific discoveries and technologic inventions from rail ways to steamships from spinning looms to printing machines quickly brought amazing changes to the country. For a time England was the “workshop of the world.” Large amount of profits were accumulated both from expanding its foreign trade markets and from exploiting its huge-sized colonies. Towards the mid-century, England had reached its highest point of development as a world power. And beneath the great prosperity and richness, there existed widespread poverty and wretchedness among the working class. In the towns and cities where new factories and mines bloomed, population grew at a high rate, which surely resulted in extreme material and mental poverty. Workers and their families, the component of the population, were crowded in the dirty and insanitary slums. The working conditions under which workers toiled were unimaginably brutal, especially in textile factories and coal mines where women and children were widely employed. Then Oliver Twist, Dickens’s protest against the workhouses, was appearing in serial form. The worsening living and work