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毕业论文关键字: 人道主义, 查尔斯•狄更斯, 《双城记》
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments i
Abstract ii
摘要 iii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction of Charles Dickens 2
1.2 Introduction of A Tale of Two Cities 3
2 Charles Dickens’s Humanism 6
2.1 The Definition of Humanism 6
2.2 Characteristics of Charles Dickens’ Humanism 7
3 Humanism Reflected in the Characters of A Tale of Two Cities 9
3.1 Dr. Alexander Manette 9
3.2 Lucie Manette 10
3.3 Charles Darnay 11
3.4 Syney Carton 12
3.5 Madame Defarge 13
3.6 The Everemonde Brothers 13
4 The Importance of Humanism 15
5 Conclusions 17
Bibliography 18
1 Introduction
During Victorian age, there are many preeminent novelists and without denying, Charles Dickens is one of them and is a major figure in world literature. In his whole life, he created many works. Among those masterpieces, A Tale of Two Cities enjoys an outstanding place. A Tale of Two Cities is a long historical novel based on French revolution. There is a famous sentence in this book, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” which draws our attention back to that period. At that time, aristocrats treated lower class people so badly and cruelly that the hatred of them toward nobility generated. The irreconcilable contradiction between lower people and nobility is the reason why French revolution broke out. In this book, in the revolt started by lower class people, one can feel the author’s humanism expressed by love and self-sacrifice.
This paper, through analyzing the characters in this novel, indicates that Charles Dickens’s humanism has a significant influence on his time. By learning his humanism, people in current time still can benefit from the kindness and care of Charles Dickens about social revolution.
1.1 Introduction of Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at 1 Mile End Terrace, Landport in Portsmouth, the second of eight children of John Dickens and Elizabeth Dickens. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was temporarily stationed in the district. In the age of twelve, his family’s dire straits forced Dickens to quit school and work in a blacking factory, a place where shoes polish is made. Within weeks, his father was put in debtor’s prison, where Dickens’s mother and siblings eventually joined him. At this moment, Dickens supported himself and continued his work at the factory. The horrific conditions in the factory haunted him for the rest of his life, as did the experience of temporary orphan hood. Apparently, Dickens never forgot the day when a more senior boy in the warehouse took it upon himself to instruct Dickens in how to do his work more efficiently. For Dickens, that instruction may have represented the first step toward his full integration into the misery and tedium of working-class life (Net. 1).
After inheriting some money, Dickens’s father got out of prison and Dickens returned to school. He once worked as a law clerk and later as a journalist. His experience as a journalist kept him in close contact with the dark social conditions of the Industrial Revolution, and he grew disillusioned with the attempts of lawmakers to alleviate those conditions. A collection of semi-fictional sketches entitled Sketches by Boz earned him recognition as a writer. Dickens began to use his writing to earn money when his first novel, the Pickwick Papers, was published, which was serialized in 1836 and published in book form the following year.