『바너비 럿쥐』: 디킨즈 초기소설의 정점 (Barnaby Rudge: A Pivotal Work of Dickens’s Early Career)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 19세기영어권문학회
· 수록지 정보 : 19세기 영어권 문학 / 23권 / 2호 / 59 ~ 93페이지
· 저자명 : 이인규

초록

In spite of being Dickens’s first real project to prove his novelistic capacity, Barnaby Rudge has been generally considered as ‘the most unsatisfactory’ of Dickens’s works. This study challenges this widely-accepted view in the criticism of Barnaby Rudge and tries to reestablish its status in Dickens’s world.
A close reading shows that the seemingly clumsy ‘broken-backed’ plot of Barnaby Rudge, which most critics disapprove as a crucial defect of the novel, is only an illusive aspect of a very carefully woven structure. Dickens’s narrative strategy uses the intended looseness of the first half of the story to maximize the ironical effect through a contrast against the tight intensity of the second half. Dickens’s creative representations of father-son relationships also contribute to building a solid fictional world of Barnaby Rudge as a historical novel. The filial conflicts and rebellions of Joe Willet, Edward Chester, and Hugh against their oppressive or corrupt fathers demonstrate the novel’s theme as a microcosm of the whole social crisis and rebellion caused by Gordon riots.
The vivid descriptions of the violent and destructive nature of the Gordon riots reveals Dickens’s negative middle-class view on social revolution and violence, but it should be viewed as Dickens’s personal ideological stance, not as his novelistic limitation. A real literary defect of Barnaby Rudge as a historical novel can be found in the too much overflow of Dickens’s uncontrolled comic impulses, which fails to harmonize with his historical imagination.
All things considered, Barnaby Rudge does not deserve the unfair reputation as a serious failure. As a pivotal work of Dickens’s earl career, it is much better than Dickens’s previous novels such as Oliver Twist or The Old Curious Shop: it should be installed as one of Dickens’s representative works, successfully illustrating his creative capability as a novelist.

영어초록

In spite of being Dickens’s first real project to prove his novelistic capacity, Barnaby Rudge has been generally considered as ‘the most unsatisfactory’ of Dickens’s works. This study challenges this widely-accepted view in the criticism of Barnaby Rudge and tries to reestablish its status in Dickens’s world.
A close reading shows that the seemingly clumsy ‘broken-backed’ plot of Barnaby Rudge, which most critics disapprove as a crucial defect of the novel, is only an illusive aspect of a very carefully woven structure. Dickens’s narrative strategy uses the intended looseness of the first half of the story to maximize the ironical effect through a contrast against the tight intensity of the second half. Dickens’s creative representations of father-son relationships also contribute to building a solid fictional world of Barnaby Rudge as a historical novel. The filial conflicts and rebellions of Joe Willet, Edward Chester, and Hugh against their oppressive or corrupt fathers demonstrate the novel’s theme as a microcosm of the whole social crisis and rebellion caused by Gordon riots.
The vivid descriptions of the violent and destructive nature of the Gordon riots reveals Dickens’s negative middle-class view on social revolution and violence, but it should be viewed as Dickens’s personal ideological stance, not as his novelistic limitation. A real literary defect of Barnaby Rudge as a historical novel can be found in the too much overflow of Dickens’s uncontrolled comic impulses, which fails to harmonize with his historical imagination.
All things considered, Barnaby Rudge does not deserve the unfair reputation as a serious failure. As a pivotal work of Dickens’s earl career, it is much better than Dickens’s previous novels such as Oliver Twist or The Old Curious Shop: it should be installed as one of Dickens’s representative works, successfully illustrating his creative capability as a novelist.

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