INTRODUCTION Humour, comedy and laughter occupy a large space in the accounts of the Victorian literature and culture. On the one hand, comic representations were everywhere, and attained a high cultural prominence (Rosenthal, 2015). Many of the Victorian novelists recognized as masters in using humour such as Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray being the most prominent in the use of comic techniques (Ibid.). Meanwhile, it was a comic periodical, it was the time that became the publication most connected with the popular culture of the period. At the same time, though, the period produced the stereotype of the humorless, repressed Victorian: distrustful of laughter and gaiety, and it is not just modern observers who locate
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The aim of humour is to reveal the uncomfortable truth and to transmit the real events and problems within Victorian society (Nilsen,1998:1). Many great novelists such as Charles Dickens,Giorg Eliot,Oscar Wild used literally devices like humour to satirize and sent a message to their audience to search and found treatment and solutions for society’s defects. Clinton Buddeley states about the use of humour and satire in the Victorian age:
“There was much satire and burlesque written during the eighteenth century, and V. C. ClintonBaddeley comments on the difference between these two genres: Satire is the schoolmaster attacking dishonesty with a whip. Burlesque is the rude boy attacking pomposity with apeashooter. Satire must laugh not to weep; burlesque must laugh not to burst" (Nilson , 1998:2). For better understanding of humour readers must educated on the social customs and context of the Victorian …show more content…
Dickens has a special talent for evoking strong emotions that result in laughter, terror, and/or pathos. These emotions are used to support his dominant themes and effects, and although the earlier novels tend to be lighter in tone and the later novels more serious, there is a seriousness in his humor throughout his writing career (Www. Oxford University Press, 2013 ) James Kincaid said, “Generally speaking, as Dickens progressed he used humour for perhaps more serious purposes, attacking and persuading the reader more and more subtly” (Kincaid 4). Charles Dickens’s novels fall into two categories:Comedies of Manners: where social, family, and political hierarchies are satirized, andComedies of Humours: where the characters are seen as eccentrics, or even grotesques. Northrup Frye feels that Dickens has two types of humours characters, the genial, generous, and lovable ones, and the absurd or sinister ones.Typically the characters in the congenial society have amiable and harmless eccentricities, while the humours characters in the obstructing society reinforce the false standards and values of that society (Frye 56-57). Dickens novels can be seen as ironic tragic-comedies of deception. Dickens targets the injustices of the nineteenth century, namely,
The aim of humour is to reveal the uncomfortable truth and to transmit the real events and problems within Victorian society (Nilsen,1998:1). Many great novelists such as Charles Dickens,Giorg Eliot,Oscar Wild used literally devices like humour to satirize and sent a message to their audience to search and found treatment and solutions for society’s defects. Clinton Buddeley states about the use of humour and satire in the Victorian age:
“There was much satire and burlesque written during the eighteenth century, and V. C. ClintonBaddeley comments on the difference between these two genres: Satire is the schoolmaster attacking dishonesty with a whip. Burlesque is the rude boy attacking pomposity with apeashooter. Satire must laugh not to weep; burlesque must laugh not to burst" (Nilson , 1998:2). For better understanding of humour readers must educated on the social customs and context of the Victorian …show more content…
Dickens has a special talent for evoking strong emotions that result in laughter, terror, and/or pathos. These emotions are used to support his dominant themes and effects, and although the earlier novels tend to be lighter in tone and the later novels more serious, there is a seriousness in his humor throughout his writing career (Www. Oxford University Press, 2013 ) James Kincaid said, “Generally speaking, as Dickens progressed he used humour for perhaps more serious purposes, attacking and persuading the reader more and more subtly” (Kincaid 4). Charles Dickens’s novels fall into two categories:Comedies of Manners: where social, family, and political hierarchies are satirized, andComedies of Humours: where the characters are seen as eccentrics, or even grotesques. Northrup Frye feels that Dickens has two types of humours characters, the genial, generous, and lovable ones, and the absurd or sinister ones.Typically the characters in the congenial society have amiable and harmless eccentricities, while the humours characters in the obstructing society reinforce the false standards and values of that society (Frye 56-57). Dickens novels can be seen as ironic tragic-comedies of deception. Dickens targets the injustices of the nineteenth century, namely,