Allegorical Thackeray : secularised allegory in William Makepeace Thakeray's major novels.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Redling, Ellen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863--Criticism and interpretation.

Thackeray, William Makepeace.

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

307 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Zürich : Lit Verlag, [2015]

Summary:

This study explores Thackeray as an allegorist rather than a mere satirist. In doing so, it also enriches and extends current debates on allegorical theory. Allegorical Thackeray demonstrates that his major novels Vanity Fair, Pendennis and The Newcomes go beyond the satirical and parodic techniques used in his early works and can be interpreted as secularised successors of traditional reader-based Christian allegories. With this human-allegorical focus Thackeray stands against an excessive emphasis on the culturing of the individual self, society and the nation which can be perceived in the works of his forerunners and of other Victorian writers, such as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Anthony Trollope. Thackeray certainly did not believe in the idea of one single authoritarian 'truth', but he seems to suggest that, if religious morality is completely replaced by national, social or idiosyncratic notions of 'morality', this could lead to detrimental distortions of more lasting and encompassing values. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Allegorical Thackeray 1

2 Allegory 11

2.1 Definitions of Allegory 13

2.2 The Allos in Allegory 16

2.3 Tracing the Historical Development of Literary Allegory 32

2.4 The Allegory of Mankind and God 36

2.4.1 The Medieval Morality Plays 38

2.4.2 William Langland's Piers Plowman 49

2.4.3 Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene 56

2.4.4 John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress 60

2.5 The Allegory of Love 68

2.6 Modern Theories of Allegory 77

3 Thackeray's Satirical and Parodic Techniques 87

3.1 Catherine 87

3.2 Barry Lyndon 93

3.3 The Book of Snobs 96

3.4 Thackeray's Search for his Own Approach to Morality and Realism 104

4 Thackeray's Secularised Allegories 109

4.1 Vanity Fair 109

4.1.1 From Satire and Parody to Allegory 111

4.1.2 Dobbin's Allegorical Journey 120

4.1.2.1 Dobbin's Recurrent Moral Failings (chs. 35-59) 131

4.1.2.2 Dobbin's Ultimate Defeat and Resignation (chs. 62-66) 137

4.1.2.3 Dobbin's Contingent Happiness and His Hope through Love (ch. 67) 142

4.2 Pendennis 146

4.2.1 Episodes 1 and 2: The Fotheringay Affair and Pen's Time at Oxbridge (I,1-18) 151

4.2.2 Episode 3: Pen is Torn between Laura and Blanche (I,22-29) 159

4.2.3 Episode 4: Pen's First Job in London and His New Affair with Blanche (I,29 - II,7) 164

4.2.4 Episode 5: The Fanny Bolton Affair (II,8-19) 169

4.2.5 Episode 6: Pen's Final Fall and Secularised Redemption (II,20-37) 173

4.3 The Newcomes 182

4.3.1 Episode 1: Colonel Newcome and His Son Clive (I,1-26) 184

4.3.2 Episode 2: The Love Between Clive and Ethel and Lady Kew's Negative Influence (I,27-38) 188

4.3.3 Episode 3: Clive's Rejection by Ethel and the Colonel's Interference (II,1-17) 193

4.3.4 Episode 4: Clive's and Ethel's Sufferings in the Colonel's War (II.17-31) 198

4.3.5 Episode 5: Extreme Sufferings and Late Reconciliations (II,32-42) 203

5 Thackeray's Contemporaries and Their Indebtedness to the Rise of Autonomous Individualism 213

5.1 The Renaissance 216

5.1.1 Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince 216

5.1.2 Michel de Montaigne's Essais 218

5.2 The Eighteenth Century: Being Extraordinary: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Solitary Walker 220

5.3 The Nineteenth Century 222

5.3.1 Being Alone: The Byronic Hero and Mary Shelley's Apocalyptic Last Man 222

5.3.2 Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes 224

5.3.3 Samuel Smiles' Self-Help 226

6 The Approaches of Thackeray's Contemporaries 229

6.1 Charles Dickens' David Copperfield 229

6.1.1 Episode 1: David's Tormented Childhood (chs. 1-14) 231

6.1.2 Episode 2: David's Sublime Rival Uriah Heep (chs. 15-52) 238

6.1.3 Episode 3: David's Fascination with Steerforth (chs. 20-55) 242

6.1.4 Episode 4: Dora's Captivating Effect and David's Two Marriages (chs. 26-53/64) 245

6.2 Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre 251

6.3 Anthony Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds 258

6.3.1 Frank's Fascination with the Alluring Lizzie 260

6.3.2 Frank's Growing Detachment From Lizzie 268

6.3.3 'Coming Right at Last' 273

7 Swimming against the Tide 277

8 Bibliography 281

9 Index of Names 301.

ISBN:

9783643906731

3643906730

OCLC:

912706281

Publisher Number:

99967966111