The main characters of the novel "Oliver Twist" by Ch. Dickenson

I. Dickens is a world-famous English novelist. (Dickens knew the life of the London poor well. Since 1883, he began to publish the first works that readers liked. Reproducing the impoverished life, C. Dickens exposes the true face of the English bourgeoisie, its ugly greed for money. Multifaceted novels contain intrigue, a sharp plot, lively a description that reflects the life of England in the middle of the 19th century.)

II. Oliver Twist is one of Charles Dickens' favorite characters. (Living in terrible poverty, Dickens, as a teenager, began to write stories about what he saw around him, supplementing episodes from his biography.)

1. Common in the life of Dickens and Oliver Twist. (Dickens's life was not cloudless. He was the grandson of a lackey and the son of an official who all the time tried to "go out to people", and everything was unsuccessful. When his father was thrown into a debt hole, the boy had to look for work. He spends sixteen hours a day glues in a warehouse putting labels on jars of wax, walked across London on foot. mother. Upon reaching the workhouse, the poor young woman died, leaving behind a newborn. So Oliver found himself in this world of sorrow and sorrow. A long and cruel struggle for survival began.)

2. Symbolism of the name. (Twist means "twist and turn." That was the name of the youth dance. But for Dickens' hero, one had to twist and turn in order not to die. Small child. Don't Oliver's tears of compassion and his plaintive words: "I'm still very small ... and so ... lonely, sir, very lonely!")

3. Evil characters surrounded by Oliver Twist. (Since the life left the body of Oliver's mother, he was surrounded by evil and cruel people. Baba put the newborn in a poor, yellowed shirt, and it immediately became clear that the boy was not the son of a nobleman, but "a parish pupil, an orphan from a workhouse, rootless , an eternally hungry beggar who is not destined to know anything in life except kicks and a side, with which to kick everything and spare no one." fell into the fire or managed to suffocate, then the cradle tumbled or one of the unfortunate people was scalded. Before He could get to his feet, the members of the board of trustees declared that the boy was already big, and therefore he should earn bread. Then Mr. Bumble and the members of the board were engaged in , how to cheaply give the baby into slavery - first they tried to be a chimney sweep, then they gave it to trunarev.When Oliver escaped from the house of the undertaker, unkind people again appeared on his way: Rogue, Char Li Beite, Billy Sykes, and old Fagin, who tried to turn the little fugitive into a thief.)

4. Good guardian angels of Oliver Twist. (The two young ladies Beth and Nancy, who behaved very sweetly and naturally, seemed to Oliver magnificent girls. And Mr. Brownlow and Mrs. two people surrounded Oliver with a paternal care that he did not know until now.Lovely, according to Oliver's feelings, Dickens portrayed other good characters - Mrs. Mayley, Rose, Harry.)

III. The problem of good and evil in the novels of Dickens. (In subsequent novels, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Trading house"Dombey and Son", "Bleak House", "Little Dorrit" and others Dickens abandoned the one-line image of good and evil. However, he expressed the most important thing in a few words: "The time will come, and a person ... who boasts of his contempt for other people and proves his case, referring to the acquired gold and silver ... this person will know that all her wisdom is the madness of an idiot compared to a pure and simple heart.")

Charles Dickens(1812-1870) at the age of twenty-five already had in his homeland the glory of "inimitable", the best of modern novelists. His first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), a brilliant masterpiece of comic prose, made him the favorite writer of the English-speaking world. Second novel "Oliver Twist"(1838) will be the subject of our consideration as Victorian novel sample.

This is a defiantly implausible story of a pure orphan boy, illegitimate, who miraculously survives in a workhouse, as an apprentice to a ferocious undertaker, in London's darkest thieves' dens. Angelic Oliver wants to be destroyed by his brother, a secular young man Monks, who does not want to fulfill the will of his late father, who, before his death, bequeathed half of his fortune to his illegitimate son Oliver. According to the terms of the will, the money will go to Oliver only if he does not go astray before adulthood. direct way, will not tarnish your name. To destroy Oliver, Monks conspires with one of the bigwigs of the London underworld, the Jew Fagin, and Fagin lures Oliver into his gang. But no forces of evil can prevail over good will honest people who sympathize with Oliver and in spite of all the intrigues restore his good name. The novel ends with a happy ending, traditional for English classical literature, a "happy ending", in which all the villains who sought to corrupt Oliver are punished (the buyer of stolen goods, Fagin, is hanged; the killer Sykes dies to escape the police and an angry mob), and Oliver finds relatives and friends , returns its name and state.

"Oliver Twist" was originally conceived as a crime-detective novel. In the English literature of those years, the so-called "Newgate" novel, named after the Newgate criminal prison in London, was very fashionable. This prison is described in the novel - it holds its the last days Fagin. The "Newgate" novel necessarily described criminal offenses that tickled the nerves of the reader, a detective intrigue was woven in which the paths of the lower classes of society, the inhabitants of the London bottom, and the very top - aristocrats with an impeccable reputation, who actually turned out to be the inspirers of the most monstrous crimes, intersected. The sensational "Newgate" novel, with its poetics of intentional contrasts, obviously owes much to romantic literature, and, thus, in early work Dickens reveals the same measure of continuity in relation to romanticism that we noted for Shagreen Skin, an early novel by Balzac. However, at the same time, Dickens opposes the idealization of crime characteristic of the "Newgate" novel, against the charm of Byronic heroes who have penetrated the criminal world. The author's preface to the novel testifies that the main things for Dickens as a Victorian novelist were the exposure and punishment of vice and the service of public morality:

It seemed to me that to depict the real members of a criminal gang, to draw them in all their ugliness, with all their vileness, to show their miserable, impoverished life, to show them as they really are - they are always sneaking, seized with anxiety, along the dirtiest paths life, and wherever they look, a terrible black gallows looms before them - it seemed to me that to portray this means to try to do what is necessary and what will serve society. And I did to the best of my ability.

The "Newgate" features in "Oliver Twist" consist of a deliberate thickening of colors in the description of dirty dens and their inhabitants. Hardened criminals, runaway convicts exploit the boys, instilling in them a kind of thieves' pride, from time to time betraying the less capable of their students to the police; they also push girls like Nancy, torn by remorse and loyalty to their lovers, onto the panel. By the way, the image of Nancy, a "fallen creature", is characteristic of many novels of Dickens's contemporaries, being the embodiment of the feeling of guilt that a prosperous person felt towards them. middle class. The most vivid image of the novel is Fagin, the head of a gang of thieves, "a burned-out beast," according to the author; of his accomplices, the image of the robber and murderer Bill Sykes is most detailed. Those episodes that unfold in the thieves' environment in the slums of the East End are the most vivid and convincing in the novel, the author as an artist is bold and diverse here.

But in the process of work, the idea of the novel was enriched with themes that testify to Dickens' attention to the urgent needs of the people, which make it possible to predict him. further development as a truly national realist writer. Dickens became interested in workhouses, new English institutions created in 1834 under the new Poor Law. Prior to that, local church authorities and parishes were responsible for the care of the weak and the poor. The Victorians, for all their piety, did not donate too generously to the church, and the new law ordered that all the poor from several parishes be gathered in one place, where they had to work as hard as they could, paying off their maintenance. At the same time, families were separated, fed so that the inhabitants workhouses were dying of exhaustion, and people preferred to be imprisoned for begging than to end up in workhouses. With his novel, Dickens continued the stormy public controversy around this newest institute of English democracy and strongly condemned him in the unforgettable first pages of the novel, which describes the birth of Oliver and his childhood in the workhouse.

These first chapters stand apart in the novel: the author writes here not a criminal, but a socially accusatory novel. Mrs. Mann's description of "baby farm", workhouse practices is shocking modern reader cruelty, but completely reliable - Dickens himself visited such institutions. The artistry of this description is achieved by contrasting the gloomy scenes of Oliver's childhood and the humorous tone of the author. Tragic material is set off by a light comic style. For example, after Oliver's "crime" when, in desperation of hunger, he asked for more of his meager portion of porridge, he is punished with solitary confinement, which is described as follows:

As for exercise, the weather was wonderfully cold, and he was allowed to douse each morning under a pump in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who saw to it that he did not catch a cold, and with a cane caused a feeling of warmth throughout his body. As for the society, every two days he was taken to the hall where the boys dined, and there they were flogged as an example and a warning to everyone else.

In the novel, which is diverse in terms of material, the image of Oliver becomes a connecting link, and in this image the melodramatic nature of the art of early Dickens, the sentimentality so characteristic of Victorian literature as a whole, is most clearly manifested. This is a melodrama in the best sense of the word: the author operates with enlarged situations and universal feelings, which are perceived by the reader in a very predictable way. Indeed, how can one not feel sympathy for a boy who did not know his parents, who was subjected to the most cruel trials; how not to be imbued with disgust for villains who are indifferent to the suffering of a child or push him onto the path of vice; how not to sympathize with the efforts of the good ladies and gentlemen who wrested Oliver from the hands of a monstrous gang. Predictability in the development of the plot, the given moral lesson, the indispensable victory of good over evil are the characteristic features of the Victorian novel. In this sad story social problems are intertwined with the features of criminal and family novels, and from the novel of education, Dickens takes only the general direction of the development of the plot, because of all the characters in the novel, Oliver is the least realistic. These are Dickens' first forays into the study of child psychology, and Oliver's image is still far from the image of children in Dickens's mature social novels, such as Dombey and Son. Hard times", "Great Expectations". Oliver in the novel is called to embody Good. Dickens understands the child as an unspoiled soul, an ideal being, he resists all the ulcers of society, vice does not stick to this angelic creature. Although Oliver himself does not know about this, he is of noble birth, and Dickens is inclined to explain his innate subtlety of feelings, decency precisely by the nobility of blood, and vice in this novel is still more the property of the lower classes.However, Oliver could not have escaped the persecution of evil forces alone if the author had not brought him to help cloyingly leafy images of "good gentlemen": Mr. Brownlow, who turns out to be the closest friend of Oliver's late father, and his friend Mr. Grimwig. Another protector of Oliver is the "English rose" Rose Maylie. The pretty girl turns out to be his own aunt, and the efforts of all these people wealthy enough to do good, bring the novel to a happy ending.

There is another side to the novel that made it especially popular outside of England. Dickens here for the first time showed his remarkable ability to convey the atmosphere of London, which in the 19th century was the largest city on the planet. Here he spent his own difficult childhood, he was aware of all the districts and nooks and crannies of the giant city, and Dickens draws it differently from what was customary before him in English literature, without emphasizing its metropolitan facade and signs cultural life, but from the inside, depicting all the consequences of urbanization. Dickens' biographer H. Pearson writes about this: "Dickens was London itself. He merged with the city together, he became a particle of every brick, every drop of bonding mortar. humor, his most valuable and original contribution to literature. the greatest poet streets, embankments and squares, but at that time this unique feature of his work escaped the attention of critics.

Perception of Dickens' work early XXI century, of course, is very different from the perception of his contemporaries: what caused tears of tenderness in the reader Victorian era, today it seems to us strained, overly sentimental. But Dickens's novels, like all great realistic novels, will always be examples of humanistic values, examples of the struggle between Good and Evil, inimitable English humor in the creation of characters.

The novels "Oliver Twist" and "Dombey and Son" were created in different periods the writer's work: "Oliver Twist" - one of the early social novels of Dickens, which he completed in March 1839; "Dombey and Son" - best work 40s, opening a more in-depth approach of the writer to social phenomena and rightfully considered a "brilliant novel", while in "Oliver Twist" many critics note shortcomings - for example, the process of the relationship between man and the environment is not sufficiently convincingly disclosed, the direct influence of the surrounding social conditions on the evolution of heroes, on the formation of their characters is not shown. However, both of these novels can be combined as works in which children are the positive characters.

Dickens, choosing the child as goodie for his works, he tried to awaken in his adult readers the bygone childhood, their childish immediacy of perceptions and assessments. He always argued that in a world where practicality and industrialization reign, it is necessary to develop the imagination in every possible way, encouraging children's imagination. In the writer himself, in an amazing way, an active, witty, painfully feeling injustice and reacting to it writer - and a strange and receptive child with an unusual worldview coexisted in an amazing way. It is not for nothing that the writer's childhood years served as a source of many images in his work.

Little Oliver is born and harsh life with all mercilessness he makes his demands to him: "... he was marked and numbered and immediately took his place - a child in the care of the parish, an orphan from a workhouse, a humble, half-starved unfortunate, doomed to endure shocks, making his way in the light, unfortunates, whom all despised and no one pitied, Oliver's childhood is spent in an environment like him, unfortunate orphans, "not burdened with either excess food or excess clothing", as Warden Bumble and Mrs. Maine do their best to make the most of out of the meager provisions of food and clothing that the orphans of the parish are supplied with. Children here die of starvation and beatings, or turn into pathetic, downtrodden, frightened creatures. But Oliver is touching, not because he is a broken victim who does not dare to speak a word. , expects nothing and hopes for nothing. Oliver is touching because he is an optimist. His timid request for an extra portion of porridge: "Be so kind, sir, I want more" because and regarded as a dangerous rebellion that he dares, knowing that there is a lie, still believe in the truth. The whole tragedy of this scene is that Oliver expects good and believes in justice; With this childhood faith, Oliver denounces injustice, not because it is bad with economic or social point view, but simply because it is bad. With the same naive faith in goodness and hope for sympathy, he turns to Mr. Bumble: "Everyone hates me. Oh sir, please don't be angry with me!" Mr. Bamble is surprised, and it cannot be otherwise - after all, he has long lost that childlike spontaneity that we see in Oliver and which Dickens is trying to awaken in his readers.

Oliver remains direct and naive - remains a child! - throughout the story: when he becomes an apprentice to an undertaker, finds himself in a gang of thieves, becomes a victim of the villain Sykes and the owner of the den of thieves Fagin, having seen the darkest sides of life, he retains his inherent purity and childish naivety - among a gang of thieves and in the house of a kind gentleman Mr. Brownlow, he speaks and behaves with unfailing nobility - his character is formed outside the influence of surrounding circumstances. This leads some critics to say that this positive image is essentially just empty space. Dickens, in their opinion, introduces the image of Oliver into the novel as a symbol human soul under influence external forces; the writer needs it in order to awaken in the reader a sense of compassion (because before him is a small, lonely, offended child) and hatred for a ruthless system that turns poverty, ignorance and faith in goodness to its advantage, in order to cause fear and disgust in front of a gang thieves, debunk the false halo of romance around the image of the underworld. However, the images of Fagin, Sykes, the Artful Dodger, Noah Claypole are much more convincing than " whole army kind, noble, but colorless and cloyingly sensitive characters who become friends with the baby and in the end, by some miracle, turn out to be his relatives.

Roz Maylie and Mr. Brownlow are also goodies, but the former is too angelic and flawless, and the latter is too good-natured and well-disposed to be lively and convincing, in any way believable. Just like in a fairy tale, these kind and merciful people unexpectedly and accidentally come to the aid of Oliver in all the difficult moments of his life. This is hardly true, but in the preface to Oliver Twist, Dickens emphasizes that one of the goals of his book is to "show harsh truth". But we must not forget that Dickens also considers the tasks of the artist from the point of view of the moral impact on the reader - and in this case Dickens the moralist contradicts Dickens the artist. He cares about justice and tries to convince his reader that "without deep love, kindness heartfelt and gratitude to the one whose law is mercy ... without this happiness is unattainable ", And let Rose Mayly be just one of his incorporeal female images, just an echo of the blow inflicted on the author by the death of Mary Hogarth; let Mr. Brownlow be just an old good-natured a gentleman, much less bright than the same Noah Claypole - these positive characters make the reader, like little Oliver Twist, childishly believe in the existence of mercy, kindness and justice in relation to the oppressed and disadvantaged.

The underworld must be disgusting - Dickens proves this idea through Oliver's rejection of the demands of Fagin's gang; what he is entrusted with, the boy performs mechanically, crying out for help to God, begging him "it is better to send down death right now ... save him from such deeds." The book on crimes that Fagin gives him, Oliver throws away in horror - this natural horror of a child before the ugly, vile, miserable life of a criminal gang Dickens recognizes as the only true attitude. Although Oliver, according to critics, is a weak-willed hero, a puppet - but this puppet is driven by the best motives and convictions of the author. If the happy ending of the novel, Oliver's unexpected acquisition of a family and property, and his remaining moral purity and faith in goodness show us things not as they really are, then they simply must be so. Perhaps Dickens was sentimental in telling the story of Oliver Twist - but it would be more true to say that he was wise, childishly wise: he looks at evil with beautiful surprise, through the eyes of his hero - Oliver Twist, attacking the workhouse with the simplicity of a boy, met a cannibal. Finishing the novel, albeit implausibly, but safely for Oliver and his friends - all his goodies - Dickens ardently demands truth and justice, as the boy from the orphanage demanded porridge.

The children of Dickens' early works, including Oliver Twist, are not far removed from their predecessors in literature XVIII centuries are extremely incorporeal, passive beings guided by someone else's will. The image of Paul Dombey, as mentioned above, open new horizons. Dickens' great creative success is considered to be the image of Mr. Dombey, around whom all the plot lines of the novel are concentrated, but the novel is still called Dombey and Son, and to tear Paul's story from the book as a whole means to scatter the entire novel.

Paul, defending his individuality, gets rid of the negative passive characteristic, which in the former Dickens was an obligatory indicator of childish naivety. Paul Dombey is also naive, but in a different way - such naivety is not good: he is quite naively interested in what money is - and suddenly, with childish insight, debunks the golden idol worshiped by his father: "If they are good and can do anything, I I don’t understand why they didn’t save my mother ... they can’t also make me strong and completely healthy, right, dad? ... Not only “dad”, but the reader understands that this is true; Profoundly naive and natural is Paul's conversation with the Pipchin mission: "I don't think I'll ever love you a little, I want to leave. This is not my house. This is a very ugly house. "Little Paul is unable to endure the system of education that his father exposes; Blimber's school and Mrs. Pipchin's boarding house are disastrous for him - the pedantry of adults only emphasizes that Paul is still a child in need of care and affection. He becomes a victim economic view for a child - he was supposed to become the heir and successor of his father's work, who had been increasing the wealth of the company all his life. But for Paul, money is "cruel", he is a weak and sickly child, and not some fictional, abstract heir that his father sees in him. The child in him is seen only by his sister Florence and, perhaps, by the old Glub, who tells him strange stories. Paul seeks solitude, does not participate in games, answering his comrades that he does not need them; he looks like a "young dwarf" in the face, and at night he dreams of strange things. This is no longer Oliver Twist, who remains a child in any circumstances - Paul is depressed and prone to long reflections, he is "tired, very lonely, he is very sad." Dickens emphasizes that Paul soon lost the liveliness that he had at the beginning, and became "even older, stranger and more concentrated." The only ones who noticed Paul's condition were his sister Florence and Mr. Toots - also goodies in Dombey and Son, although completely different.

Florence Dombey is essentially a mix of Rose Maylie and Oliver Twist. On the one hand, this is another pale female image of those that Dickens always came out with especially unconvincing - "little mother", much more passive by nature than her brother. On the other hand, she, like Oliver Twist, takes on the role of a kind of white canvas, on which Dickens the artist imposes both the indifference of a cold father, and Paul's ardent affection, and the reader's sympathy for a rejected and hated daughter.

Some critics consider Mr Toots the best of positive images not only in Dombey and Son, but throughout the writer's work. Toots seems to tell the reader - being kind and stupid is not bad, but very good, because you are endowed with that impeccable simplicity, for which everything is amazing. Toots is a big child, with a pure look of humility he sees the world as it is, embodying a very deep truth: everything external is vain and deceitful, and internal is unclear, unconscious, but true. Despite the mist that obscured his thoughts, Paul's little figure was never hidden from Toots, who "fifty times a day" asked how Paul was doing. Toots can forget who is in front of him and whether he has already asked him about his well-being. But he will never forget what the essence of a person is, he will never take bad for good. He admires true Christians, confusing their names; doing everything wrong, he lives right. He reveres the Fighting Rooster because he is strong, and Florence because she is good, but knows for sure what is best, preferring goodness to strength, like a true man. Mr. Toots is one of the great eccentrics of Dickens, embodying, oddly enough, the best human qualities.

However, in the novel Paul Dombey is also called the "little eccentric", and the child thinks a lot about this, not understanding what others mean. It is from this moment that Dickens begins his careful and detailed penetration into the inner world of a weak, sick child, who thinks about his sister, and about the roar of the sea, and about the portrait on the stairs, and about wild birds over the sea, and about clouds - thoughts that are not very suitable for heir to a prosperous company. But Paul is good because he is Paul, just a little dear Paul, and not Dombey, that notorious Son, as his father wants him to be. Paul never felt his father's love - rather, he felt that his father needed him; although Dombey's feeling for his son is great, but this is not what a weak little child needs - not without reason, before his death, Paul remembers his mother and the old nurse, and asks his father only "not to grieve for him", knowing exactly that with his death all Dombey's hopes are the hopes of an ambitious proud - will fail. It is important for Dickens to show Paul not as part of the Dombey and Son firm, crushed by the burden of hopes placed on him, which are not destined to come true, but simple child, which seems odd because it is out of place. Mr. Dombey, who tramples on his son's feelings, ruins his own soul; he blindly follows Mrs. Pipchin's dogma that "young people should not be forced too much, but should resort to caresses - there is no need to think, in my time they never thought so" . Dickens paints impressive pictures of the bad upbringing at Miss Pipchin and in Dr. Blimber's "academy" and the consequences arising from such upbringing: Paul, who had previously been "childish, was not averse to playing and generally not distinguished by gloom", turns into a lonely child, surrounded by bizarre images created by his imagination. The image of Paul is more complex, deeper and more tragic than the image of the same Oliver twist - in "Dombey and Son" the tragic fate of a child in a bourgeois world where money rules is shown with terrible truth, not smoothed out by happy endings. Dickens makes the reader think deeply about the fate of little Paul, although his story occupies a relatively small place in the novel. So, in the novels Oliver Twist and Dombey and Son, Dickens addresses the child as a positive hero, inviting his readers to acquire the same childish immediacy of perception as his heroes. The images of positive characters become more and more clearly defined from novel to novel, acquiring complexity and individuality - if critics have the right to call Oliver Twist an incorporeal shadow, then Paul Dombey is undoubtedly a more complex image, shown in the light of the influence of surrounding social and moral conditions on the formation of a child's personality; Dickens refuses to be too straightforward in portraying the character of a child, seeking to reveal in his inherent psychological complexity the inner world of little Paul Dombey, whose image morally opposes the gloomy image of his father.

"Oliver Twist" is directed against the "poor law", against workhouses, against existing political economy concepts. public opinion promises of happiness and prosperity for the majority. Happiness is achieved only by Oliver Twist, and even then thanks to the romantic mood of the author, who is sure that the purity, purity of Oliver's soul, his resistance to life's difficulties need to be rewarded. However, it would be a mistake to assume that the novel is the fulfillment by the author of his social mission. Oliver Twist was also Dickens's civic response to the dominance of the so-called Newgate novel at the time, in which the story of thieves and criminals was carried out exclusively in melodramatic and romantic tones, and the lawbreakers themselves were a type of superman, very attractive to readers. The Byronic hero moved into a criminal environment.

Dickens opposed the idealization of crime and those who commit it. Dickens is busy studying the mechanism of evil, its impact on a person; goodness is realized in him in images Mr. Brownlow and Oliver Twist himself, Roz Mayly. The most convex were the images of Feigin, Sykes, Nancy. However, Nancy has some attractive character traits and even shows a tender affection for Oliver, but she also cruelly pays for it.

In the preface to the book, Dickens clearly stated the essence of his plan: “It seemed to me that to portray the real members of a criminal gang, to draw them in all their ugliness, with all their vileness, to show their miserable, impoverished life, to show them as they really are - they are always sneaking, seized with anxiety, along the dirtiest paths of life, and wherever they look, a terrible black gallows looms before them - it seemed to me that to portray this means trying to do what is necessary and what will serve society. And I did it to the best of my ability." Oliver Twist, having gone through the life school of Feigin, who taught him the art of thieving, remains a virtuous and pure child. He feels his unsuitability for the craft to which the old swindler is pushing him, but he feels light and free in Mr. Brownlow's comfortable bedroom, where he immediately draws attention to the portrait of a young woman who later turned out to be his mother.

Evil penetrates all corners of London, most of all it is common among those whom society has doomed to poverty, slavery and suffering. But perhaps the darkest pages in the novel are those dedicated to the workhouses. Thin oatmeal three times a day, two onions a week, and half a loaf on Sundays - that was the meager ration that supported the miserable, always hungry boys of the workhouse, who ruffled hemp from six o'clock in the morning.

When Oliver, driven to despair by hunger, timidly asks the warder for an additional portion of porridge, the boy is considered a rebel and locked in a cold closet. In this work, the narrative is colored with gloomy humor, the narrator seems to have difficulty believing that the events taking place relate to a civilized and boasting of their democracy and the justice of England. There is a different pacing here as well, with short chapters filled with numerous events that are the essence of the adventure genre. In the fate of little Oliver, adventures turn out to be misadventures when the sinister figure of Monks, Oliver's brother, appears on the scene, who, in order to receive an inheritance, tries to destroy the main character by colluding with Fagin and forcing him to make a thief out of Oliver. In this novel by Dickens, the features of a detective story are tangible, but both professional servants of the law and enthusiasts who fell in love with the boy and wished to restore the good name of his father and return the inheritance legally belonging to him are engaged in investigating the mystery of Twist.

Of particular importance in The Adventures of Oliver Twist are the social motivations of people's behavior, which determined certain traits of their characters. The negative characters of the novel are the bearers of evil, hardened by life, immoral and cynical. Predators by nature, always profiting at the expense of others. So, the head of the gang of thieves Feigin loves to enjoy the sight of stolen gold items.

Oliver in the novel is called to embody Good. Dickens understands a child as an unspoiled soul, an ideal being, he resists all the ulcers of society, vice does not stick to this angelic creature. Although Oliver himself does not know about it, he is of noble birth, and Dickens is inclined to explain his innate subtlety of feelings, decency precisely by the nobility of blood, and vice in this novel is still more the property of the lower classes. However, Oliver would not have been able to escape the persecution of evil forces alone if the author had not brought to his aid the sugary-leaf images of “good gentlemen”: Mr. Brownlow, who turns out to be the closest friend of Oliver’s late father, and his friend Mr. Grimwig. Another defender of Oliver is the “English rose” Roz Maylie. The lovely girl turns out to be his own aunt, and the efforts of all these people, wealthy enough to do good, bring the novel to a happy ending.

The work of W. M. Thackeray. The evolution of his realism and outlook. Thackeray's artistic method. Socio-political and moral problems in the novel "Vanity Fair".

Thackeray's work can be divided into three periods. The first - the end of the 30s - the middle of the 40s, the second - the middle of the 40s - 1848 and the third - after 1848.

Thackeray's literary activity began with journalism. Already in the 30s, Thackeray's worldview and his political convictions were being formed. At the very beginning of the 1930s, he wrote: "I consider our system of education unsuitable for me and will do what I can to acquire knowledge in a different way." Thackeray remarks: “I am not a Chartist, I am only a Republican. I would like to see all people equal, and this impudent aristocracy scattered to all winds.

By birth and upbringing, Thackeray belonged to the propertied classes. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that he knew the life of the people poorly, although the people in his works are not represented in the same way as in Dickens' novels. Criticizing social injustice and the existing social order, Thackeray speaks with pain about the situation of the working and working masses. Thackeray has always been an opponent of wars, their overly solemn praise on the pages of magazines, novels, and advocated a truthful realistic description of genuine events.

The second stage of Thackeray's work opens with a collection of satirical essays, The Book of Snobs, published as separate essays. Literary parodies, moralistic essays, journalistic publications prepared the writer for a deeper critical analysis and understanding of contemporary reality. A series of essays on snobs depicts English social, political and private life.

Vanity Fair is subtitled "A Novel Without a Hero". Thackeray finds it impossible to find a good hero among the Osbornes and Crowleys. However, unlike Dickens, he does not introduce people from the people into his novel and does not oppose the selfish world of the bourgeois common man. And at the same time, he does not refuse to fully approve the principles of moral purity and honesty as positive principles. Their bearers are nourished Dobbin. In the cycle of Vanity Fair, he is the only one who retains kindness and responsiveness, selflessness and modesty.

The problem of the good hero presented an insoluble difficulty for Thackeray. He sees his main task in "being able to accurately reproduce the feeling of truth as accurately as possible." He does not seek exaggeration. He is not inclined to depict a person as either a notorious villain or an ideal being. It is important for him to reveal the complexity of the interaction of various principles in a person’s character, to understand the reasons that make him commit this or that act. And, obviously, precisely because every person, along with virtues, contains flaws, Thackeray avoids calling any of the characters in his novel a “hero”, a person ideal in every respect. In his opinion, such people do not exist, although they appeared in Dickens' novels - Nicholas Nickleby, Walter Gay, the good Cheeryble brothers and many lovely young girls.

"Let's not have a hero, but we pretend to have a heroine," says Thackeray, referring to Becky Sharp. However, these words are imbued with irony. Becky has intelligence, energy, strength of character, resourcefulness and beauty; but from her green eyes and irresistible smile it becomes scary; (moral problem) Becky is cunning, hypocritical, greedy, by all means she wants to be rich and "respectable". Achieving her goal, Becky sets the fair carousel in motion, but Rebecca Sharp cannot be a true heroine in human, moral terms. - In the cycle of Vanity Fair, the only one who retains kindness and responsiveness, selflessness and modesty is William Dobbin, “good Dobbin”, selflessly loving Emilia, hurrying to help those who need him. Thackeray sympathizes with Dobbin, but does not consider him a hero. The image of Dobbin, like all the others, is connected with the theme of "vanity of vanities" sounding in the novel. His love is given to a limited and selfish woman, his aspirations are empty and vain, his disappointment is inevitable.

Thackeray builds his novel differently. It takes readers into the complicated married life of Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. The happy ending of the novel, according to Thackeray, only deceives the reader. His conclusions about life are far more hopeless. He concludes his novel Vanity Fair with the words: “Ah, Vanitas Vanitatum1. Who among us is happy in this world? Who among us gets what his heart longs for, and having received, does not long for more? Let's put the dolls together, children, and close the drawer, for our performance is over."

Thackeray used an innovative method of including the image of the author in the system of images of the novel, observing what is happening and commenting on the events, actions, judgments of the characters. The author's commentary helps to reveal all the funny, ugly, absurd and pitiful things that happen on the stage of the puppet theater, enhances the satirical sound of the novel. The author's digressions, of which there are so many in the novel, serve the task of exposing social and moral vices.

Literature of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Decadence, its origins and aesthetic platform. Life and work of O. Wilde. Problems of the novel "The Picture of D. Gray"

One of the founders of English romanticism in literature is the poet and painter William Blake. In his works, reality was intertwined with a fantastic ideal world, which was quite clearly manifested in the poems: "Weddings of Hell and Heaven" (1790), "French Revolution" (1791), "Europe" (1794).

British Romantic poetry reached its peak in the work of Lord George Byron. Despite his high social position, Byron protested both against aristocratic circles and against the official policy of England.

He financed the Italian Carbonari and the Greek rebels at his own expense, which, in the end, led him to his death. His most famous works are the poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1812-1818) and the novel in verse "Don Juan" (1819-1824).

In prose, romanticism was most fully manifested in the works of Walter Scott, who can rightfully be called the founder of the modern historical novel. Scott created a cycle of novels that covered British history from crusades until the middle of the 17th century, as well as the political upheavals in Scotland in the 18th century. His most famous works are: "Rob Roy" (1818), "Ivanhoe" (1820), "Quentin Dorward" (1823).

The Victorian era marked the beginning of the post-romantic period in the development of English literature. This time of double morality and the open superiority of the superpower over the rest of the world gave birth to the Victorian novel, the pinnacle of which was the work of Charles Dickens.

He was the first to give a realistic description of modern industrial society and big city ruthless to its inhabitants. The most famous Dickens novels are Oliver Twist (1838), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853).

William Thackeray wrote satirical novels, poking fun at the mores of British society. His pen belongs to: "The Book of Snobs" (1848) and "Vanity Fair" (1847-1848).

The apotheosis of Victorianism was the "white man's burden" singer Joseph Rudyard Kipling, author of Barracks Songs (1892) and The Jungle Book (1894-1895). In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

The moralizing of Victorianism was bound to evoke a backlash sooner or later, which manifested itself in the emergence of British decadence. The initiator of this direction was Oscar Wilde, who proclaimed the principle of "pure art". His masterpieces include: the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and the comedy An Ideal Husband (1895).

In the end, Wilde was charged with immoral behavior and imprisoned, where he stayed for 2 years. After his release, the writer left England and settled in Paris, where he died.

The death of Queen Victoria coincided with the beginning of the new 20th century and brought with it the abolition of strict moral restrictions. The era of the great colonial expansion receded into the past, and this was immediately reflected both in public sentiment and in literature.

It was at this time that the heyday of the work of the playwright Bernard Shaw falls. He is the author of many plays, the most significant of which are Pygmalion (1913) and Heartbreak House (1919). In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

John Galsworthy created a detailed panorama of the life of the British middle class in the 1st third of the 20th century. His pen belongs to the cycle of novels "The Forsyte Saga" (1906 - 1921). Faithful to decadence, James Joyce portrayed in the novel Ulysses (1922) the complete isolation of man in the modern big city.

Decadence (from the French décadence - decline, decay) - a type of worldview, a set of mindsets that has developed in late XIX century, which is characterized by painful sensitivity, mental fatigue and apathy, extreme individualism and pessimism, the desire to escape from reality.

The origins of decadence - in the culture and literature of the middle - second half of XIX century. Around 1850, numerous articles about decadence appeared in Western Europe, and a fashion for decadent epochs arose. The forerunners of decadence are rightfully considered French writers Theophile Gauthier with his theory of "art for art's sake", Charles Baudelaire, who gave an example of the decadent style in his collection of poems "Flowers of Evil" (1857), the Goncourt brothers with their heightened sensitivity and subtle susceptibility, English Pre-Raphaelite writers (D. G. Rosseti , H. Rosseti and others), in whose work mysticism and eroticism are intricately intertwined. The philosophical prerequisites for decadence were the philosophy of the German thinkers Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and the French philosopher Henri Bergson.

All works of decadent art are characterized by an attitude to outrageous readers and viewers. To this end, writers use paradox, symbol, eroticism, the cult of sensual pleasures, mysticism. Decadent writers are looking for new, unusual combinations of words so that the reader can "dream for weeks about the meaning of the word, both precise and vague."

The characteristic themes and iconography of decadence are the themes of decay and death, images of "fatal" women, the symbolism of plants, precious stones, animals, androgyne image, dream motif, appeal to Eastern and medieval mysticism, legends and fantasies.

Oscar Wilde(1854–1900), English playwright, poet, prose writer, essayist, critic.

His full name- Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde. By origin - Irish. Born October 16, 1854 in Dublin, in a very famous family. Father, Sir William Wilde, was a world-famous ophthalmologist, the author of many scientific papers; mother - a secular lady who wrote poetry, considered her receptions a literary salon.

In 1874, Wilde, having won a scholarship to study at Oxford's Magdalen College in the classical department, entered the intellectual stronghold of England - Oxford. At Oxford, Wilde created himself. He gained a reputation for shining without special efforts. It was here that his special philosophy of art took shape.

After graduation, Oscar Wilde moved to London. Thanks to his talent, wit and ability to attract attention, Wilde quickly joined the high life. He did the "essential" English society revolution - a revolution in fashion. From now on, he appeared in society in personally invented mind-blowing outfits:

Already the first poetry collection Wilde - "Poems" (1881) demonstrated his commitment to the aesthetic direction of decadence, with its characteristic cult of individualism, pretentiousness, mysticism, pessimistic moods of loneliness and despair. By the same time, his first experience in dramaturgy - "Faith, or the Nihilists" belongs.

During 1882 he lectured on literature in the United States and Canada.

After America, Wilde traveled to Paris. At 29, he met Constance Lloyd, fell in love, became a family man. They had two sons (Cyril and Vivian), for whom Wilde composed fairy tales, later written down on paper - “ happy prince and Other Tales" (1888) and "The Pomegranate House" (1891). The magical, truly bewitching world of these very beautiful and sad stories is actually addressed not to children, but to adult readers.

In 1887 he published the stories " The Canterville Ghost”, “The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile”, “The Sphinx Without a Riddle”, “The Model Millionaire”, “Portrait of Mr. W. H.”, which made up the first collection of his stories. However, Wilde did not like to write down everything that came to his mind. Many of the stories with which he charmed his listeners remained unwritten.

In 1890, the only novel that finally brought Wilde a stunning success, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published. Critics accused his novel of immorality. And in 1891, the novel came out with significant additions and a special preface, which became a manifesto for aestheticism - the direction and religion that Wilde created.

1891–1895 - Wilde's years of dizzying glory. All Wilde's plays, filled with paradoxes, aphorisms and phrases that have become winged, were written in the early 1890s: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), The Woman of No Attention (1893), The Holy Harlot, or the Jeweled Woman "(1893), "An Ideal Husband" (1895), "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895

In 1895, Oscar Wilde was arraigned for immorality and sentenced to two years in prison. In 1897, he left prison a completely sick and broken man, and later went to France. His last work was the poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1898).

In The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Wilde recounts the tragic fate of a prisoner sentenced to death for the murder of his beloved. Calls for compassion and a truthful depiction of the horrors of life directly contradict Wilde's previous aesthetic theories. But he, in essence, was never a consistent exponent of these theories, he always internally resisted them. The writer remained one of the most tragic and striking figures in the history of English literature.

One of the most brilliant and sophisticated aesthetes of England in the 19th century. spent the last years of his life in poverty, obscurity and loneliness. He died quite unexpectedly on November 30, 1900 from meningitis, obtained through an ear infection.

P.D.G. In his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde highlights important issues related to the cultural, social and interpersonal aspects of human relationships. In particular, Oscar Wilde, through the artistic images reveals the relationship between art and the inner world of man.

The writer tries to create an atmosphere of beauty, a sense of beauty through the very manner of speaking. He constantly amazes the reader by twisting the constant notions and concepts. Each of the characters is the embodiment of some side of art, beauty. Basil is the embodiment of service to art, Lord Henry is the embodiment of the philosophy of pleasure, and Dorian is a man who has decided to make his life as beautiful as art itself. But the paradox is that, declaring beauty as the essence of life, the characters do things that cannot be considered beautiful.

The very plot of the novel contains main idea aestheticism about the unconditional superiority of art over real life. The novel deals with the influence of art on the soul. Real art cannot be false, beautiful must be beautiful, and if it is not what it seems, then it is short-lived. So was Dorian Gray's beauty - it wasn't real. No, she seems to be real, but only from the outside. Inwardly, beauty has been corrupted and, in the end, Dorian Gray cannot stand such a double life. True, he wanted to destroy only the portrait, but he destroys himself - and justice triumphs!

In parallel, the stories of Dorian and his portrait are lined up, which have changed places in relation to the laws of nature, to the very course of time: a living person overcomes its flow, refusing to grow old, and a work of art begins to live a bodily life in time. Stopping the hero in time, eternal youth, as a rule, are associated with the motives of a deal with the devil, and the secular wit, praising immorality, new hedonism, but in fact leading a completely decent existence, acts as the tempter of the initially innocent Dorian - Lord Henry Watton. He opens the young man's eyes to his beauty, infects him with the spirit of the pursuit of pleasure, teaches him to appreciate youth and live one day at a time.

Step by step, Dorian Gray turns from a person who has a good and pure heart into an egoist and a criminal, which destroys his own soul. Oscar Wilde emphasizes the idea that only conscience is able to control a person's life, his actions, and even not to correct them, but to reproach them. A person lives as long as his conscience is alive, which only he himself can destroy.

Wilde defends the supreme power of art. Real life can be disgusting, but art recreates beauty, preserves it, it is not subject to either time or moral laws.

Charles Dickens 1812 - 1870

Open book

NOVEL "THE ADVENTURES OF OLIVER TWIST"

Image system

The interaction of two genre-stylistic jets - "Gothic" and social - everyday - is interestingly manifested in the images of the two villains of the novel - Monks and Fedzhin. Monks is a gentleman by birth (but not for behavior and feelings), Fagin is a stolen goods reclaimer, but involvement in a crime equalizes them. Here it would be appropriate to cite a sarcastic comment by Dickens, albeit on a different occasion: “What rich material for a philosopher: he testifies ... how similarly the development of cute properties takes place in a noble lord and a most common beggar.”

Fagin appears to the reader as a figure of a purely domestic plan, and stylistically reduced. In his appearance, the features of theatrical misers clearly appear, which, in particular, is felt in the scene that Oliver saw of checking hidden jewelry. However, gradually this character is "demonized". Fagin looks more and more like a "collector of souls", which he steals from innocent children, involving them in dashing deeds. His role at the end of the novel is voiced by Sykes, yelling "Devil!" And it's not Fagin's fault that Sykes lacks a soul, didn't he "took" her, as he tried to do with his other "pets"?

Monks, on the contrary, appears in the halo of the "hellish" criminal from the gothic novel, which confirms his appearance, and his passion, and mystery. However, in the meantime, as in the course of the story the figure of Fagin grows to demonic proportions, the embodiment of metaphysical evil and steps into the territory of the "Gothic", Monks cheers up, loses his "demonicity" and turns into a rather miserable youngster, greedy and malicious, envious and vile. The motivation for his strange behavior turns out to be pragmatic: to steal the entire inheritance of his father and morally destroy his half-brother (another way to "eliminate" Oliver threatened him with a collision with the law). The “corruption” of Monks, “demonic” at first glance, is also explained by the upbringing of his no less malicious mother. Monks and Fagin move towards each other from different artistic dimensions and, in the end, seem to change places.

1 Lluziya - a hint, a reference to a certain artistic text or life fact that should be known to the reader.

2 Metaphysical - such that is outside the physical, material - sensual, objective (in the original, basic meaning of the word).

According to Sykes, his image is structured differently. The crude soul of the robber exists in the same gross body, the lack of a moral sense likens him to an animal; therefore it is not surprising that in copyright there is disdain for him. The animal nature in Syksi reinforces his constant companion - a white dog. Embittered and distrustful, like his master, the dog at the same time demonstrates the cruelty of the latter with his constantly broken muzzle.

Nota bene. Another semantic opposition, embedded in The Adventures of Oliver Twist, follows from Dickens adopted from the enlighteners of the 18th century. philosophy of morality, its various teachings. As the author of the monograph about the writer T. Silman demonstrated, he relied on two main types of worldview of the last century, so to speak, two pictures of the world: the Hobbesian law of the animal struggle of all against all, “homo homini lupus est” [“man is a wolf to man”], and the enlightening-humane doctrine of people's love for each other... The driving force of human actions is either selfishness, private interest, the desire for property (Mandeville), or virtue, benevolence, moral sense(Shaftesbury)." The researcher makes the correct conclusion that the negative characters of Dickens act as if illustrating the position of the first philosophical system, while the positive ones - the second.

Shaftesbury's "enlightenment-humane" utopian world is embodied in a kind of idyll, embodied by Dickens on the pages of the novel. The idyllic plan is "inhabited" by Oliver's benefactors and their friends: Mr. Brownlow, Mrs. Maylie, Rose and Harry, Dr. Losbern and others. It is characteristic that topographically Dickens places his idyll at a sufficient distance from the noisy quarters of London, and subsequently unfolds in the “classic” form of a carefree existence in the bosom of nature. In the spirit of J.-J. Rousseau contrasts rural life with urban life, which draws people in, but is not organic for them: “Who will figure out why pictures of the gentle life of nature so deeply cut into the soul of exhausted residents of cramped crowded cities and fill their devastated hearts with their own fragrant freshness! ..” - exclaims the writer. Dickens complements the rural idyll with a family idyll, which he introduces into almost every work of his and which becomes a reward for good heroes. In The Adventures of Oliver Twist, everything related to home comfort is performed by important function, shading the wretched and restless life of the social "bottom".

The semantic opposition in the novel is also embodied at the plot level: in a kind of struggle for Oliver Twist, which takes place between two groups of characters - well-wishers and criminals. In this perspective, the logically inexplicable desire of the latter to keep Oliver in their snares is clarified, which on the “surface” of the work is somewhat artificially motivated by the intrigues of Monks. And if the criminals make considerable efforts to achieve their goal, then well-wishers at first sight feel in Oliver "their own" and treat him with confidence. It is in vain that Oliver was born in an orphanage and from childhood ended up in a den of robbers - his rightful place in a bright idyll, to which he joins at the end of the novel.

Nota bene. The genre nature of "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is defined as "a novel of education". And is it really so? Oliver does not change throughout the story, life circumstances have no effect on him. “I was convinced that it would not be easy to accustom him to our craft, he is not at all like other children in his position ... I could not lead him to anything, to tempt him with anything,” complains Monksov Fagin. As conceived by the author, Fedzhin gets in the way of an innate "instinct for goodness", extremely developed into a guy. Dickens attached special importance to this instinct, because it is he who, in the end, puts an end to the development of the socio-moral concept of the work. It is he who shows that the main stimulus of human behavior is nevertheless benevolence, striving for good, and not selfishness or private interest. Evil, according to Dickenson, caused by an abnormal state of the world. In this, the writer follows the educators, who believed that the "unreasonable" state of society "spoils" good human nature. However, the soil on which evil grows in society is human shortcomings: her callousness, cruelty, stinginess, and the like, which reinforces the “everyday” plan of the novel. And therefore, the work retains internal tension, generated by the coexistence in one artistic space of social, “gothic” and idyllic layers, society as a crowd of cruel and vicious people and an idealized hero.

The protagonist in the novel appears as a lively and handsome boy, but at the same time he is the embodiment of the author's speculative construction: he demonstrates the superiority of the moral principle in human nature, the idea of natural kindness. Appearing on the pages of the novel as an "angel" - kind, sincere, grateful, he leaves them the same way. How are the other boys - Dodger and Charlie Bats, also depicted not without sympathy, different from Oliver? Obviously, only the writer's intention. More often we meet with the Slick, to whom the bandit "romance" has completely fooled his head: he is proud of his "craft", and presents the court as a "finest hour". And what lies ahead for this child, naive and trusting in her own way? Charlie Bats, a wit and a merry fellow, at the end of the work takes out a “pardon” from the author, which gives him the opportunity to turn to a decent life, which is quite consistent with the desire of readers. The “pardon” is also received by the friend of the unfortunate Nancy, a funny face, in hairpins and an outfit of incredible colors.

Details. It should be noted that the images of the "people of the abyss" are much more interesting both in terms of semantic content and artistic structure than the images of an idyllic plan. This also applies to the "heroines" of the novel - the decent and conscientious Rose and the "sinner" Nancy, who also constitute a kind of opposition. The rose is the first in a series of angelic female images that Dickens displays in every novel of the 40s and 50s.

J. Cruikshank. Illustration for the work "The Adventures of Oliver Twist"

The writer depicts the beauty of the Rose, through which he conveys her extraordinary spiritual purity and wisdom unprecedented at her age; the reader admires her, but in the future is of little interest. According to Nancy, her image is formed gradually, from separate fragments: we see her reflection in her friend, we follow her behavior, her postures, movements, habits, emotional and mental states, actions. She intrigues the reader, confusing his moral sense, and even more so the reader of the early Victorian, because Nancy is Sykes' mistress, she violated more than one severe social "taboo" and more than one Christian commandment. This image also testifies to the power of goodness in a person, and much more convincingly than the images of idealized heroes. Nancy is undoubtedly the most successful female image in Dickens's early work and one of the most interesting in general. It is interesting, in particular, that Nancy's love for the animal-like Sikes touches the reader more than Rose's love for the reasonable and noble Harry. Only the then moral attitude can explain why, in the already mentioned preface, Dickens was forced to respond to reproaches regarding the impossibility of such love.

However, in general, the artistic structure of images and their psychological content in The Adventures of Oliver Twist are still quite simple. There are "comic characters" constructed in the manner of "Pickwick" here, such as Mr. Brownlow's friend Mr. Brownlow Grimwig, a grouchy good-natured man who constantly vows to eat his own head and hates orange peels. "Comic characters" of this structure will exist on the periphery of Dickens' novels for a long time to come and, it seems, will be created more quickly for the pleasure of the public than on their own, because they have a minimal semantic load. Does not differ in special depth and the image of the protagonist. Major discoveries in the field of psychology, in particular children's, the writer will make later. Until brilliant insights into the essence of childhood, Dickens went gradually, and the work in which they were fully embodied was "David Copperfield". It was the first work that depicted the child in all the originality of her inner world. Unlike young heroes previous novels, David learns the world, and does not come into it with ready-made knowledge.

Combined in "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" and various stylistic layers of the text. Dickens not only changes the subject of the image, moving from high to low, but also intonation registers, giving free rein to laughter and sentimentality, naturalism and idealization, indignation and admiration.