A Study on Charles Dickens from a Psychoanalytical Perspective

Jiang, Jindi(강금비),Baek, Nak-Seung(백낙승) 강원대학교 인문과학연구소 2014 인문과학연구 Vol.0 No.41

이 논문의 목적은 찰스 디킨스가 글을 쓰는 과정에서 어렸을 때 받았던 정신적 외상이 그의 자서전적 작품 속에 어떻게 반영되어 있는지를 고찰하는데 있다. 또한 지금까지 디킨스의 정신적 외상과 관련된 연구를 토대로 디킨스가 받은 구체적인 정신적 외상이 어떠한 형태로 표면화 되어있는지를 살펴보고, 작가가 글을 쓰는 과정에서 어린 시절에 받았던 정신적 외상을 어떻게 극복하게 되었는지를 프로이트의 정신분석이론을 바탕으로 고찰한다. 첫 번째 장에서는 다각적으로 연구된 디킨스에 관한 비평이 어떻게 디킨스의 외상을 설명하고 있는지를 분석하고, 두 번째 장에서는 디킨스의 외상에 직접적인 영향을 끼쳤다고 볼 수 있는 구두공장에서의 경험이 어떻게 정신적 외상으로 이어지는지를 구체적으로 조망하고, 디킨스가 글을 쓰면서 어떻게 그 외상으로부터 벗어났는지를 밝히고, 세 번째 장은 그의 자서전적 소설 올리버 트위스트, 데이비드 카퍼필드, 그리고 위대한 유산에서 디킨스의 정신적 외상이 어떻게 창조적인 문학성으로 발현되었는지를 살펴보고 이에 따른 작가의 정신적인 성장의 중요성에 대해 논의한다. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate how Charles Dickens’ childhood traumas are reflected in his autobiographical novels ? Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. This research is mainly based upon Freudian psychoanalysis theory. With an in-depth exploration of Dickens’ responses towards his traumatic incident, the paper defines the core of the traumas and surveys how the defense mechanisms function to counterbalance Dickens’ childhood trauma only through the medium of art. Introductory part of this paper takes a brief look at the past criticisms on Dickens and clarifies the task of the paper. Section two deals with Dickens’ traumatic experiences, including his parents’ influence on his growth and his experiences in Warren’s Blacking factory which leaves him a permanent scar for humiliation, and reveals the origin of his trauma and its healing process. Section three discusses how Dickens manages to transfer his childhood trauma into his literary creativity, especially in his three autobiographical novels: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. The paper attempts to look into the fact that writing serves primarily as a mental therapy for Dickens to gain his salvation. In view of Freudian psychoanalytical approach, his creation of autobiographical novels apparently does much toward a self-treatment to overcome his traumas.

『올리버 트위스트』이전의 찰스 디킨스: 1836년 편지 연결망을 중심으로

설연지 영미문학연구회 2025 영미문학연구 Vol.48 No.-

This article draws and analyzes a small-scale cultural map of 1836 Britain based on Charles Dickens’ letters written and sent during the thirteen-month period from January 1836 through January 1837, using digital network analysis tool Gephi. 1837 is a pivotal year in British literary history as the (official) beginning of the Victorian era. It is also a pivotal year in the career of Dickens the novelist, because Oliver Twist began to be serialized this year. Drawing on Gephi visualizations of the letters Dickens wrote during this period, I make two points. First, while Dickens’ surviving, and accessible, letter network during this period takes on a recognizably public face, Catherine Hogarth’s presence is unmistakably, and perhaps unexpectedly, large. Her presence in the letter network of this particular phase of Dickens’ career demands further research on her contribution to Dickens’ maturation as a writer from a feminist perspective. Second, the letters reveal that Oliver Twist is a product of the period when Dickens was heavily and actively engaged with the theatre, especially the musical theatre. As such, Oliver Twist should be read in the context of the nineteenth-century theatre history, including the nineteenth-century and modern adaptations of the novel itself.

디킨즈의 여성인물에 대한 페미니스트 비평 재고

김현숙 水原大學校 2016 論文集 Vol.30 No.-

This article aims to reconsider the development of Feminist criticism on Dickens’s female characters. From the first, Dickens’s female characters were criticized as nonrealistic and unattractive. His female heroines were Especially criticized as representing the typical Victorian angel of the house, the idol of Victorian women ideology. Resultingly, Dickens was appreciated as problematic in that he repeated the comtemporary women ideology. Early feminist criticism strengthened this traditional view on Dickens female characters and Dickens himself. They decided Dickens as one of the representative men of the Victorian patriarchal society. However, Later feminist criticism, combined with New Historicism, Marxism, and Linguistics, focused on the more complicated sides of Dickens’s female characters. They focused on Dickens’s understatements hidden in the representation of female characters, which subverted the traditional values of Victorian patriarchal society. As the result, Feminist criticism on Dickens expanded the horizons of Dickens criticism.

『데이빗 코퍼필드』에서의 광대들

박금희 ( Geum Hee Park ) 한국영미문화학회 2009 영미문화 Vol.9 No.1

This article aims to illuminate the comic characters and their humor in Dickens`s novel David Copperfield in Bakhtinian point, and to clarify what the humorous characteristics are, and how they contribute to his reinforcement of socially critical messages in this novel. So far this novel has been called the only one of Dickens`s comic novels, even though it includes lots of social critical meanings. But it is true that Dickensian critics couldn`t make sure of the clear reasons why it is both very interesting and critical. Furthermore, it is also true that this novel has been criticized as a clumsy one in the realistic, psycho-analytic, dramatic angle. This approach to Dickensian comic characters through Bakhtinian fool, clown, and rogue concepts here could make up for or correct such criticisms, and reevaluate Dickens`s humor and social criticisms in the context of general public culture. Bakhtin believes oppression by social ideologies prevent us from having good mutual relationships and divides our society. He thinks laughter liberates us from such oppression and restores our good relationships. As he applied his concepts based on the laughter of Middle Ages to Rabelais`s novels, and examined what the authentically liberating power in Rabelais`s laughter is, this article could clarify the liberating power of laughter by Dickens`s comic characters, such as Mr and Mrs Micawber, Dick, Miss Betsey Trotwood and Miss Mowcher. In this novel, they often lead comic happenings, and such happenings are very similar to carnival-amusements including burning the dummy of the czar who has oppressed his or her citizenry. Especially, Dickens`s comic characters`s social criticisms, in the case of this novel, contain many complaints of social marginers, even though he has been labelled as being conservative politically. They always criticize the ideological absurdities in their society through the humorous words and behaviors in their comic happenings, like those of a carnival fool or clown in his or her amusements. This shows Dickens achieves both laughter and social criticism in David Copperfield by using Rabelaisian characterization-devices based on his general public culture. Like Bakhtin and Rabelais, Dickens seems to have believed that when we all truly liberate ourselves from the oppression of social ideologies, we can have desirable relationships between ourselves, and also solve social problems positively.

Dickens and the Idea of the Gentleman

Park, Hyung-Ji 국제언어인문학회 2002 인문언어 Vol.4 No.-

The ideal of middle class British masculinity and the representative of the new Victorian respectability, the ″gentleman″ was difficult to define amidst the class mobility and social change of the nineteenth century. Was the gentleman to be identified by class and by money\ulcorner By behavior and clothing\ulcorner By religion and morality\ulcorner This essay focuses on the problem of the ″gentleman″ as it was debated in the Victorian era and as it was reflected in the biography and work of the mid-nineteenth century's most important English writer, Charles Dickens. I examine the critical debate surrounding the Victorian idea of the ″gentleman″ by comparing the arguments of Shirley Robin Letwin's The Gentleman in Trollope(1982) and Robin Gilmour's The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel(1981). Letwin views the ″gentleman″ as largely transcending class structure, while Gilmour's more historically-conscious view locates the gentleman as emerging out of, and even enabling, the class negotiations of this period. Against the backdrop of such debates, I discuss Charles Dickens's struggles with the idea of the gentleman in theory and in practice. In his novels, especially his semi-autobiographical bildungsromane about the growth and development of boys into adulthood, Dickens prominently engages with the identity and definition of the gentleman. As I demonstrate in this essay, this interest originated from Dickens's own childhood trauma and his subsequent drive to attain gentility, a necessity complicated by the vicissitudes of his personal and professional life

개인적 자선과 공공자선 -「크리스마스 캐롤」에 나타난 디킨즈의 자선관

문상화 ( Sang Wha Moon ) 21세기영어영문학회 2012 영어영문학21 Vol.25 No.2

The purpose of this paper is to show Dickens`s view on charity appeared in his famous fable-like short story, A Christmas Carol. Through the most famous character in Dickens`s novels, Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens argues that personal charity is more important than public charity. While public charity is cruel and impersonal like work house system, personal charity, Dickens argues, is more direct and effective for its psychological distance, Three Ghosts coming on Christmas eve implies the ways of Scrooge`s past, present and future, The first Ghost is the representative of a Malthus`s cruel rationality and the second one is the show case of the conflict between the middle class and the lower class in the mid Victorian Era. The last Ghost is a kind of a suggestion to heal the conflict through personal charity meaning the material contact between individuals. In A Christmas Carol Dickens shows that he prefers to personal charity for the immediate result of charity and the fact that public charity has not fully organized yet.

찰스 디킨스의 『위대한 유산』에서 조의 역할: 신사, 가정의 천사

김택중 ( Kim Tag Jung ) 한국현대영어영문학회 2014 현대영어영문학 Vol.58 No.3

Great Expectations is one of the most representative works of Charles Dickens. Many critics have approached the novel with their focus on the growth of Pip as a gentleman. In the meantime they seem to ignore, if slightly, the role of Joe, the blacksmith, as a simple moral touchstone of the novel or the background of the main character``s moral growth. However, Joe plays a greater role in the novel than mentioned above. He represents the true qualities of a gentleman, except the quality of education, and even Dickens``s Christian morality. In addition, his reversed role as the household angel shows an enlarged role than expected as a simple background. He is not given a feminized role in his household; rather he voluntarily chooses the role in consideration of his and his wife``s character and for the peace of his household, which is very important to consider his meaning in the novel. As some critics mention, Dickens``s treatment of the concept of a gentleman in the novel is somewhat ambiguous, and it is because of the enlarged role of Joe. Joe is in fact a voice that tells of the true gentleman being not made on the basis of money or birth but on the moral quality, and of that moral quality being started and educated at home

찰스 디킨스의 『미국 여행기』에 나타난 환경에 대한 인식

김택중 ( Tag Jung Kim ) 한국현대영어영문학회 2012 현대영어영문학 Vol.56 No.2

Charles Dickens is a social critic of the Victorian England, and his social criticism is mostly based on his belief that one`s living conditions can determine his or her moral status. It is well known that his novels clearly show his strong interest in such environmental issues as housing, sanitation, water pollution, urbanizing development, and so on. Dickens believes that although science may destroy nature and humans` living conditions, it also has a power of restoring living environment to its ideal state. Nature, he also understands, has a meaning when there are people living harmoniously with it. And that is why he is so concerned with people and their living conditions. American Notes, his travelogue to America to which not many critics have paid attention in this regard, also reveals his concern with environmental problems. This paper demonstrates how seriously Dickens criticizes sanitary problems in American cities and the reckless, incomplete development performed in inland frontiers. (Chungnam National University)

찰스 디킨스의 『이탈리아의 초상』에 나타난 가톨릭

김택중 ( Kim Tag-jung ) 한국현대영어영문학회 2017 현대영어영문학 Vol.61 No.1

It is generally known that Charles Dickens disliked the Roman Catholicism. However, Dickens did not hate Catholicism itself, but rather its established religious affiliations. In this regard, he did not like any form of religion, the Roman Catholicism or the Church of England, when it asserts its violent and authoritative privileges at the sacrifice of human rights and freedom. Pictures from Italy is one of Dickens`s rare travel pieces. It is also the work that has been rarely dealt with by critics. This travelogue contains Dickens`s experiences and thoughts in his travels from France, Switzerland, and Italy during the period of 1844 and 1845 and shows his ideas about religion, the Roman Catholicism, profusely and distinctly. Therefore, Pictures from Italy is a work that we cannot ignore but have to discuss seriously when we talk of Dickens and religion. This paper aims to read this travelogue in view of his ideas and positions on Catholicism in detail. (Chungnam National University)

찰스 디킨스의 두 기행문 『미국 여행기』와 『이탈리아의 초상』 비교 분석

김택중 한국현대영어영문학회 2019 현대영어영문학 Vol.63 No.4

This paper deals with Charles Dickens’s two travelogues, American Notes and Pictures from Italy, which have been relatively ignored in criticism. These two travel books have a very important meaning in the context of the discourse of history that was then the key issue in intellectual milieu. Dickens was keenly aware of the social problems that Victorian England faced, and endeavored to improve the social conditions. He traveled to America and Europe during the 1840s. And he wanted to see how well the new improvements or systems had been applied to a new country, but realized that the problems of the Old Continent still existed in the New Continent. Through his travel to Europe, Dickens saw that the old habits and customs of the barbarous past were ‘strangely’ incorporated into the present. Hypocrisy and self-interest were everywhere he visited, and the violence of the past still had the possibility of re-occurrence. In the end, Dickens’s travel to the past and that to the future which are respectively represented by Europe and America both reconfirm his love and pride in his own country of the present.