Câu 11:

What are the characteristic features of the Critical Realism in the English Literature?

1. The introduction of a new set of characters from the working class as a new force in society. This was due, to some extent, to the influence of the Chartist movement on the literature of the time as found in Hard Times by Dickens, a novel on the soulless and unwholesome industrial life and Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gasket, a simple story about English Chartist workers.

2. A deep sense of the dramatic contrast between the rich and the poor.

Not only the contrast in economic plight is carefully recorded and analyzed in the works by the critical realists, but contrast in character and temperament is also paid close attention to. In his novel Vanity Fair Thackeray follows the fates of two middle-class girls with contrasting character, "Virtue Without Wit" & "Wit Without Virtue". One of them is  Amelia Sedley, the daughter of a wealthy merchant drowned in the gulf of  poverty as her father is ruined in the course of the French wars, the symbol of "Virtue Without Wit". The other, Rebecca or Becky Sharp, a genteel 19th century Moll Flanders, is the symbol of "Wit Without Virtue" tossed up and down in her career of cheats, hypocrisy and wealth-hunting.

3. An irresistable hatred for every species of social oppression and injustice, every vestige of fraudulent representation and hypocrisy, every  sight of man's cruelty to man. which is mixed with a deep sympathy for the common people, both children and adults who suffer and a belief in love as the only remedy in a society endangered by the cancer of economic egoism and cynical indifference. These conflicting sentiments are apparent in many jof Dickens's novels.

4. An Illusion of bringing about social justice and harmony by reforms.

The contrast between the propertied class the town poor is thought to be likely to disappear when the rich are made to be aware of the sufferings of  the poor and to share their wealth with the poor. This viewpoint is typical of Dickens as a thinker. Some critics criticized Dickens as a writer that looked at the reality through the rose-coloured glasses of complacency.

5. An interest in the theme of Woman Emancipation. Jane Eyre by Charllolte Bronte is the very first novel of insurgent womanhood in English literature. Charlotte Bronte wrote of a poor governess who by sheer force of personality won a decisive victory in the fierce battle she had to fight for love and happiness.

12/ What are Defoe’s contribution to English literature?

Daniel Defoe is rightly considered the father of the English and the European novel, for it was due to him that the genre became once and for ever established in European literature.

Defoe wrote his novels in the form of memories, which made them look like stories about real people. Defoe’s books were written in the living tongue of the epoch. He addressed the wide public and tried to make himself understood by the readers of all the layers of society. As a true Enlighteners, he sets himself the task of improving people’s morals; that was why he provided his books with a moralizing comment.

The influence of his works on the literary process as well as on the minds of the readers can hardly be overestimated. An English critic once said that without him, we should all he different from what we are.