G. K. Chesterton

Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

These papers were originally published as prefaces to the separate books of Dickens in one of the most extensive of those cheap libraries of the classics which are one of the real improvements of recent times. Thus they were harmless, being diluted by, or rather drowned in Dickens. My scrap of theory was a mere dry biscuit to be taken with the grand tawny port of great English comedy; and by most people it was not taken at all--like the biscuit. Nevertheless the essays were not in intention so aimless as they appear in fact. I had a general notion of what needed saying about Dickens to the new generation, though probably I did not say it. I will make another attempt to do so in this prologue, and, possibly fail again. There was a painful moment (somewhere about the eighties) when we watched anxiously to see whether Dickens was fading from the modern world. We have watched a little longer, and with great relief we begin to realise that it is the modern world that is fading. All that universe of ranks and respectabilities in comparison with which Dickens was called a caricaturist, all that Victorian universe in which he seemed vulgar--all that is itself breaking up like a cloudland. And only the caricatures of Dickens remain like things carved in stone. This, of course, is an old story in the case of a man reproached with any excess of the poetic. Again and again when the man of visions was pinned by the sly dog who knows the world, "The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died."

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Binker North
• Seitenzahl: 170
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Februar 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 157mm x 14mm
• Gewicht: 406g
• ISBN-13: 9781774413258
• ISBN-10: 1774413256
• Artikelnr.: 58700870

Autorenporträt

Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC*SG was an English author, philosopher, Christian defender, and literary and art reviewer who was born on May 29, 1874, and died on June 14, 1936. Chesterton wrote about theology and made up the character Father Brown, a priest-detective. Some people who don't agree with him have seen how popular books like Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man are. Chesterton often called himself a "orthodox Christian," and this view became more and more similar to Catholicism until he finally left high church Anglicanism. Authors from the Victorian era like Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin saw him as an heir. The "prince of paradox" has been used to describe him. A review in Time said this about Chesterton's writing style: "Whenever possible, Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, and allegories-first carefully turning them inside out." His writings had an impact on Jorge Luis Borges, who said that his writings were like Edgar Allan Poe's. Chesterton was born in Campden Hill, Kensington, London. His father, Edward Chesterton (1841-1922), was an estate agent, and his mother, Marie Louise Grosjean, was from Switzerland and France. Chesterton was baptized into the Church of England when he was one month old, even though his family was a Unitarian and only sometimes followed their beliefs.