고려대학교

초록/요약

This article aims to approach Dickens's novels in the carnivalesque point of view of M. M. Bakhtin, a famous Russian theorist. So far Dickens's novels have been known as comic ones, including lots of socially critical meanings. In Dickens's novels almost everything existing in his society and distressing its members tends to be reversed with joyful and openhearted laughter. Especially in The Posthumous Papers of Pickwick Club such tendency seems to be much higher than any other novel. This is why Dickens's humor is called a carnivalesque one. In this novel Dickens criticizes or comments on the various problems in his society through the relevant heteroglossia, with which his language has an inclination to be hybridized with many social and historical meanings. By means of such hybridization Dickens can maintain the proper distance in his narration and, as Bakhtin indicated, avoid not only its pathos-charged expressions, but also unmask and destroy something false, hypocritical, greedy, limited, narrowly rationalistic, and inadequate to reality. Dickens's style enables him to comment on social problems diversifiedly, and create his language stratified by plenty of heteroglossia, as Bakhtin discusses, socio-ideological belief systems. His readers can have a critical eye for their social problems as well as enjoy interesting word play, while reading.