Yeah, he's got his mannerisms- but they're HIS mannerisms. He wrote his own rule book.
I'll agree that the characters- the comic characters anyway- are flat. They don't show development. At the same time they're immensely alive in their cartoony way.
In the later novels- starting I suppose with David Copperfield- he begins to add in an element of psychological and emotional realism. He also begins to orchestrate his novels and build them into huge symbolic structures. The BIG novels- Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend- are hugely ambitious. Of course he's full of faults, but there's no-one else in Eng Lit at once so grand and so funny.
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Date: 2005-07-10 05:25 am (UTC)I'll agree that the characters- the comic characters anyway- are flat. They don't show development. At the same time they're immensely alive in their cartoony way.
In the later novels- starting I suppose with David Copperfield- he begins to add in an element of psychological and emotional realism. He also begins to orchestrate his novels and build them into huge symbolic structures. The BIG novels- Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend- are hugely ambitious. Of course he's full of faults, but there's no-one else in Eng Lit at once so grand and so funny.