FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W2016605209> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W2016605209 endingPage "59" @default.
• W2016605209 startingPage "25" @default.
• W2016605209 abstract "Get Out of Gaol Free, or:How to Read a Comic plot John Bruns (bio) Introduction G.K. Chesterton said of Dickens's second book, Pickwick, indeed, is not a good novel; but it is not a bad novel, for it is not a novel at all (109). This is not, appearances aside, a pure expression of admiration for a work whose power and success continues to survive in spite of its readers' demands for cause and effect, unity, continuity, and resolution. Chesterton is also suggesting just how difficult it is to avoid using the word novel. The problem is this: if Pickwick Papers is not a novel at all, then what is it? Just that: not a novel at all. Most critics avoid this problem altogether and simply call Pickwick Papers a failed novel, even as they acknowledge that it might never be more than it claims to be: a series of papers. Like his first outing, Sketches By Boz, Dickens gives us less a novel than what Victor Shlovsky called nanizyvanie, or a stringing together of episodes and short stories. This phrase comes from Shlovsky's discussion of the novel in general, whose origins he found in collections of short stories. The earliest literary works (like Don Quixote) gave us strange, paradoxical characters not because of a need on the author's part to illustrate philosophical or psychological insight, but as the purely accidental result of stringing inconsistent adventures together (Morson and Emerson 274). Dickens, then, might be considered a master of this stringing together. His characters [End Page 25] are held firmly and consistently within character—despite the loose and voluminous chapters in which they are housed. George Orwell, echoing Chesterton's sentiments, says that, unlike our modern novelists, Dickens gives us characters that are finished and perfect like pieces of furniture (166)1 . A Dickens character has no more mental life than a chest of drawers.2 In other words, it's impossible to carry on an imaginary conversation with Samuel Pickwick. We don't want to take issue with his choices, his actions, or his motives. We simply watch him go. The idea of episodic movement, coupled with the idea of distanced spectatorship, does much more than inform the way we understand character in Dickens,3 it nudges us toward how we might read a comic plot. The least novelistic of Dickens's books has paradoxically made us anxious to find ever more shrewd and creative ways of reading it as if it were a novel. Just why this is—just why Pickwick has been called upon to satisfy the need to read novelistically, rather than to inspire in readers other equally shrewd and creative fictional devices—is the subject of this essay. Pickwick is a book that teaches us to read comically, not novelistically. From a Formalist perspective, one might say reading novelistically means recognizing in any given story a host of literary devices that deform everyday narrative in a special way (Morson and Emerson 19). Bakhtin preferred the novel over other literary forms because, so he claimed, it had its own unique language. He broke with the Formalists precisely because the uniqueness of this language was not stressed enough by those who chose to judge novel according to theories derived from poetry. There was, really, no theory of prose available until Bakhtin worked one out. To him, understanding the novel meant understanding how it reflects more deeply, more essentially, more sensitively and rapidly, reality itself in the process of its unfolding (Epic and Novel 7). When one reads Bakthin, one comes away with an awareness of the extraordinary complexities of everyday experience and the manners in which we speak of them. At its best, the novel captures, better than any other literary form, the essential open-endedness of being, of existence. In Dostoevsky, Bakhtin found an author who took the language of the novel beyond the realm of pragmatic plot considerations (Problems of Dostoevky's Poetics 20). Characters could speak without being held to their word, and events could unfold without being read as mere consequences or causes. Another way to understand the term reading novelistically, however, [End Page 26] owes less to..." @default.
• W2016605209 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W2016605209 creator A5004216879 @default.
• W2016605209 date "2005-01-01" @default.
• W2016605209 modified "2023-09-27" @default.
• W2016605209 title "Get Out of Gaol Free, or: How to Read a Comic Plot" @default.
• W2016605209 cites W1523687673 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W1534713303 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W1543521114 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W1560675797 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W1569799669 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W1587019948 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W1637437975 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W1982993821 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W1990950946 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W2050602389 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W2053584558 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W2088027553 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W2125828657 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W2312333739 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W2797504378 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W565065900 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W568322120 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W621936651 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W622203507 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W635471199 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W2472141750 @default.
• W2016605209 cites W2493122867 @default.
• W2016605209 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/jnt.2005.0010" @default.
• W2016605209 hasPublicationYear "2005" @default.
• W2016605209 type Work @default.
• W2016605209 sameAs 2016605209 @default.
• W2016605209 citedByCount "0" @default.
• W2016605209 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W2016605209 hasAuthorship W2016605209A5004216879 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C105795698 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C121332964 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C138885662 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C144024400 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C163258240 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C167651023 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C199360897 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C2776678506 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C2778120072 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C2778223634 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C33923547 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C41008148 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C42133412 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C52119013 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C529099274 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C62520636 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C73484699 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C90559484 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C105795698 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C121332964 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C124952713 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C138885662 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C142362112 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C144024400 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C163258240 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C167651023 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C199360897 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C2776678506 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C2778120072 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C2778223634 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C33923547 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C41008148 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C42133412 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C52119013 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C529099274 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C62520636 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C73484699 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C90559484 @default.
• W2016605209 hasConceptScore W2016605209C95457728 @default.
• W2016605209 hasIssue "1" @default.
• W2016605209 hasLocation W20166052091 @default.
• W2016605209 hasOpenAccess W2016605209 @default.
• W2016605209 hasPrimaryLocation W20166052091 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W1483667617 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W1875304770 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W2334562205 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W2748952813 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W2899084033 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W3011731449 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W3175786788 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W4237810425 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W4294001514 @default.
• W2016605209 hasRelatedWork W632851784 @default.
• W2016605209 hasVolume "35" @default.
• W2016605209 isParatext "false" @default.
• W2016605209 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W2016605209 magId "2016605209" @default.
• W2016605209 workType "article" @default.