CC BY
18SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS VOLUME 4 I ISSUE 3 I 2023 _ISSN: 2181-1601
Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF 2022=5.016) Passport: http://sjifactor.com/passport.php?id=22257
HUMOR IN THE NOVEL "THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB" BY CHARLES DICKENS
Annasoltan Narbayevna Arazdurdiyeva
Student of the Faculty of Foreign Languages of the Nukus State Pedagogical Institute
named after Ajiniyaz
ABSTRACT
The aim of my writing is to explore the author's life and give information about "The posthumous papers of Pickwick club" to understand the novels better. The tasks of this article is to study Charles Dickens' life, to explain the posthumous papers of Pickwick club and to analyze Charles Dickens' novels
Keywords: Novel, literary works, posthumous, analyze,
Introduction. Dickens loved the style of 18th century Gothic romance, although it had already become a target for parody. One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the Thames, all aspects of the capital are described over the course of his body of work. His writing style is florid and poetic, with a strong comic touch. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator" often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats, or dinnerparty guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy. Many of his characters' names provide the reader with a hint as to the roles played in advancing the storyline, such as Mr. Murd stone in the novel David Copperfield, which is clearly a combination of "murder" and stony coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism.
The posthomous papers of the pickwick club.
About the novel
Dickens was working as a Parliamentary reporter and a roving journalist at the age of 24, and he had published a collection of sketches on London life as Sketches by Boz. Publisher Chapman & Hall was projecting a series of "cockney sporting plates" by illustrator Robert Seymour. There was to be a club, the members of which were to be sent on hunting and fishing expeditions into the country. Their guns were to go off by accident, and fishhooks were to get caught in their hats and trousers, and these and other misadventures were to be depicted in Seymour's comic plates [5; 23]. They asked Dickens to supply the description necessary to explain the plates and to connect them into a sort of picture novel that was fashionable at the time. He protested that he knew nothing of sport, but still accepted the commission .
SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS VOLUME 4 I ISSUE 3 I 2023 _ISSN: 2181-1601
Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF 2022=5.016) Passport: http://sjifactor.com/passport.php?id=22257
Only in a few instances did Dickens adjust his narrative to plates that had been prepared for him. Typically, he led the way with an instalment of his story, and the artist was compelled to illustrate what Dickens had already written. The story thus became the prime source of interest and the illustrations merely of secondary importance. Seymour provided the illustrations for the first two instalments before his suicide. Robert William Buss illustrated the third instalment, but Dickens did not like his work, so the remaining instalments were illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), who illustrated most of Dickens's subsequent novels. The instalments were first published in book form in 1837.
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The Pickwick Papers) was Charles Dickens's first novel. Because of his success with Sketches by Boz published in 1836, Dickens was asked by the publisher Chapman & Hall to supply descriptions to explain a series of comic "cockney sporting plates" by illustrator Robert Seymour, and to connect them into a novel. The book became a publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise. On its cultural impact, Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic writes, "'Literature' is not a big enough category for Pickwick. It defined its own, a new one that we have learned to call "entertainment." Published in 19 issues over 20 months, the success of The Pickwick Papers popularised serialised fiction and cliffhanger endings.
Summary and humor of the novel "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club," issued in 20 monthly numbers, began to appear the last of March 1836, and were concluded in November 1837. They were the work of a young man but 25 years old, who had hitherto written nothing more than a group of sketches dealing mainly with London life. A firm of London publishers, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, was then projecting a series of "cockney sporting plates" by Robert Seymour, a rather clever artist. There was to be a club, the members of which were to be sent on hunting and fishing expeditions into the country. Their guns were to go off by accident; fishhooks were to get caught in their hats and trousers; and all these and other misadventures were to be depicted in Seymour's comic plates. At this juncture, Charles Dickens was called in to supply the letterpress — that is, the description necessary to explain the plates and connect them into a sort of picture novel such as was then the fashion. Though protesting that he knew nothing of sport, Dickens nevertheless accepted the commission; he consented to the machinery of a club, and in accordance with the original design sketched Mr. Winkle who aims at a sparrow only to miss it. Seymour dying, other artists took his place; but from the very first Dickens was the master. Only in a few instances did he adjust his narrative to plates that had been prepared for him. He himself led the way with an instalment of his story, and the artist was compelled to illustrate what Dickens had already written. The story thus became the
SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS VOLUME 4 I ISSUE 3 I 2023 _ISSN: 2181-1601
Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF 2022=5.016) Passport: http://sjifactor.com/passport.php?id=222ff7
prime source of interest, and the illustrations merely of secondary importance. By this reversal of interest, Dickens transformed, at a stroke, a current type of fiction, consisting mostly of pictures, into a novel of contemporary London life. Simple as the process may appear, others who had tried the plan had all failed. Pierce Egan partially succeeded in his 'Tom and Jerry,' a novel in which the pictures and the letterpress are held in even balance.
To begin with, Dickens had no other aim than to amuse the public month by month. There was in his mind no thought of a novel with a plot to be worked out to a logical conclusion. The first number, of which only 400 copies were bound, awakened only moderate interest. But all was changed with the introduction of Sam Weller in the fifth number; and by the time the fifteenth number was reached, the printer was binding 40,000 copies. People of every class and every age bought or borrowed Pickwick. "All the boys and girls," Miss Mitford wrote of Dickens, "talk his fun — the boys in the streets; and yet those who are of the highest taste like it the most." Doctors read the book while riding from patient to patient, and judges read it while juries were deliberating. The fact is, 'Pickwick' was the most amusing burlesque of London life that had ever been written, and it has not since been equaled. Its author was intimately acquainted with all the scenes and persons that he described. He began with the House of Commons, which he turned into the Pickwick Club, with pompous speeches, noisy debates and apologies from gentlemen who wished their abusive remarks to be understood only in "a Pickwickian sense," that is, in a Parliamentary sense. Then he passed on to the law and the courts — pettifoggers who take up civil suits "on spec," to the examination of witnesses, to the judge's charge to the jury and finally to the debtors' prison. All the way along, he drew in careless abandon character after character, running back and forth between the gay and the serious. 'Pickwick' contains more than 150 characters, of whom two stand out conspicuously among Dickens's greatest creations [12; 94]. First there is Pickwick himself, a humorous compound of benevolence and simplicity, shrewdness and common sense, always a gentleman, despite his oddities and follies, with a dash of heroism in the background.
Conclusion
To sum up, I love Charles Dickens' language and style. Whoever is reading this may have little or no respect for my opinions, thinking that I am young to comprehend the greatness of the plot and language, and I admit that I probably do not completely appreciate this classic piece of literature. In my opinion, Charles Dickens has a very interesting relationship with the visual arts. Not only did he work with some of the most well-known illustrators of his day (George Cruikshank, John Leech), he inspired other incredible illustrators like Arthur Rackham as well as authors and illustrators to this day. When we say something is "Dickensian," we don't just mean it is like
SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS VOLUME 4 I ISSUE 3 I 2023 _ISSN: 2181-1601
Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF 2022=5.016) Passport: http://sjifactor.com/passport.php?id=222ff7
something from his time period. I don't think the terms Victorian and Dickensian are interchangeable. With all things Dickens there is this wonderful combination of naive enthusiasm tempered with horrible and dark tragedy. Draw someone in a top hat and stiff shirt collar and you might say he is a Victorian. Place a slightly over-sized top hat on a bright-eyed youth and then in the background place a dark and disheveled man lurking and eyeing the youth, and now you have drawn something Dickensian. Dickens evoked a feeling of narrative and you can picture it with your mind's eye. Dickens novels were episodic and lent themselves perfectly to illustrators who wanted to use a vignette to capture the mood and moment of a scene in his works.
References:
1. Ausubel, David. P. (1968). Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View. New York: Holt. Rinehart and Winston. Inc.
2. Aziz Khodjaeva. Educational Technologies and Pedagogical Skills,Tashkent, 2003.
3. Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Roppen, R. (1998). Corpus Linguistics: Investingating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Bland K. S. (2004). Grammar Sense. Oxford University Press, USA.
5. Blazek, Vaclav (2001) Indo-European Prepositions and Related Words: Internal Analysis and External Comparison. In: Linguistica Brunensia: Sbornik Praci Filosoficke Fakulty Brnenske University, A: Rada Jazykovedna/Series Linguistica, Vol. 49, pp. 15-43
6. Boers, F. (1996). Spatial Prepositions and Metaphor: A cognitive semantic journey along the up-down and the front-back dimension. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
7. Boers, F. and M. Demecheleer. 1998. A cognitive semantic approach to teaching Prepositions. ELT Journal, 52, 3, 197-204.
8. Bullokar, William (1586) Bref Grammar for English. London: Edmund Bollifant.
9. C. Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1867 reprint), p.8
10. Callow, Simon (12 February 2012). "My hero: Charles Dickens by Simon Callow". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 November 2021.
11. "Caroline Norton: A Biographical Sketch", Dr Andrzej Diniejko. Victorian Web.
12. Celce-Murcia, M. & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999) The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course (2nd edition).USA: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
13. Chomsky, N. (1975). Reflections on language. New York: Pantheon.
14. Clark, E. (1973). Nonlinguistic strategies in the acquisition of word meanings. Cognition, 2, 161-182.
15. Dames, Nicholas (June 2015). "Was Dickens a Thief?". The Atlantic. Retrieved 27 June 2021.
16. Dickens, Charles. The posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club. Open Library. OL 23001437M.
17. Mark Wormald (2003) "Introduction" to The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. London, Penguin.
