The Theatre of Self-Fashioning in Dickens’ Mid-Career

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Charles Dickens’ mid-career is characterized by a heightened sense of an audience which caused a transition in the author’s use of the theatrical element in his autobiographical narratives. Dickens was concerned about his readers from earlier on, but what differentiates his middle novels from his early works is the way in which he modifies his previous overtly theatrical style of writing to adopt a tone of sincerity. Contextual evidence shows how this change in narrative style originated from his need to reconstruct himself into a more respectable figure via his writing. Amidst such an acute consciousness of his readership, Dickens attempted to develop a narrative strategy that takes into consideration the reader’s imaginary participation in creating the impression of naturalness. This narrative strategy is similar to Dickens’ style of acting in an amateur performance titled The Frozen Deep: Dickens’ assimilation of his stage acting to his act of writing suggests how this performance mirrors his newly developed narrative technique. Stemming from an understanding of the interaction between the observer and the observed, this narrative technique enables Dickens to proceed as the mature novelist of his later works.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• TheTheatre of Self-Fashioning in Dickens’ Mid-Career 1
• Works Cited 16
• Abstract 19