英语词汇dickens的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

dickens; Dickensian. The expression what the dickens has nothing to do with author Charles Dickens’s name, as is often believed, the dickens in this case probably being an old euphe- mism for devil. Dickensian is another, greater story. As a noun Dickensian refers to novelist Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812–70) and his works, while as an adjective it describes the energy and living presence of his characters, the tremendous vi- tality and richness of the world he created. Dickens did exagger- ate his characters, but no one before or after has been able to ex- aggerate just like him. The people he created in his 14 novels and many shorter works are better known worldwide than those of any English author save Shakespeare. Micawber, Pickwick, David Copperfield, Steerforth, Oliver Twist, Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Sarah Gamp, Uriah Heep, Gradgrind, the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Little Nell—and so many others—have become words in themselves as well as names, escaping the books that contained them. Dickens, the son of an improvident government clerk—elements of him are found in both Micawber and Dorrit—had to go to work in a blacking factory at the age of 12 when his father was imprisoned for debt. He had little formal schooling and, after being appren- ticed to a lawyer, served as a parliamentary reporter for newspa- pers. Following the success of Sketches by Boz (his pen name) and Pickwick Papers in 1836, his fame was assured, and books like Oliver Twist, the semiautobiographical David Copperfield, and Hard Times, with their descriptions of the brutality of indus- trial society, made him one of the world’s most influential novel- ists. Dickens toured America twice, his unflattering American Notes the result of his first visit. His more complex works such as Bleak House, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, Little Dor- rit, and Hard Times have been acclaimed by critics as Dickens’s greatest novels, but his early books, A Tale of Two Cities and his Christmas stories have remained just as popular over the years. A Christmas Carol, as G. K. Chesterton pointed out, did much to revive the true spirit of Christmas throughout the world. Dick- ens died suddenly and prematurely at the age of 58, probably of overwork, but his wildly comic, grotesque, and tearfully pathetic characters lived on. As Chesterton wrote in his brilliant essay on the novelist, “There can be no question of the importance of Dickens as a human event in history . . . a naked flame of mere natural genius, breaking out in a man without culture, without tradition, without help from historic religions or philosophies or from the great foreign schools; and revealing a light that never was on sea or land, if only in the long fantastic shadows that it threw from common things.” Dickens’s grave is in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.

词汇	dickens
词源	dickens; Dickensian. The expression what the dickens has nothing to do with author Charles Dickens’s name, as is often believed, the dickens in this case probably being an old euphe- mism for devil. Dickensian is another, greater story. As a noun Dickensian refers to novelist Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812–70) and his works, while as an adjective it describes the energy and living presence of his characters, the tremendous vi- tality and richness of the world he created. Dickens did exagger- ate his characters, but no one before or after has been able to ex- aggerate just like him. The people he created in his 14 novels and many shorter works are better known worldwide than those of any English author save Shakespeare. Micawber, Pickwick, David Copperfield, Steerforth, Oliver Twist, Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Sarah Gamp, Uriah Heep, Gradgrind, the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Little Nell—and so many others—have become words in themselves as well as names, escaping the books that contained them. Dickens, the son of an improvident government clerk—elements of him are found in both Micawber and Dorrit—had to go to work in a blacking factory at the age of 12 when his father was imprisoned for debt. He had little formal schooling and, after being appren- ticed to a lawyer, served as a parliamentary reporter for newspa- pers. Following the success of Sketches by Boz (his pen name) and Pickwick Papers in 1836, his fame was assured, and books like Oliver Twist, the semiautobiographical David Copperfield, and Hard Times, with their descriptions of the brutality of indus- trial society, made him one of the world’s most influential novel- ists. Dickens toured America twice, his unflattering American Notes the result of his first visit. His more complex works such as Bleak House, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, Little Dor- rit, and Hard Times have been acclaimed by critics as Dickens’s greatest novels, but his early books, A Tale of Two Cities and his Christmas stories have remained just as popular over the years. A Christmas Carol, as G. K. Chesterton pointed out, did much to revive the true spirit of Christmas throughout the world. Dick- ens died suddenly and prematurely at the age of 58, probably of overwork, but his wildly comic, grotesque, and tearfully pathetic characters lived on. As Chesterton wrote in his brilliant essay on the novelist, “There can be no question of the importance of Dickens as a human event in history . . . a naked flame of mere natural genius, breaking out in a man without culture, without tradition, without help from historic religions or philosophies or from the great foreign schools; and revealing a light that never was on sea or land, if only in the long fantastic shadows that it threw from common things.” Dickens’s grave is in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.
随便看	ingle inglebrook in god we trust in hock in hoover we trusted now we are busted in hospital ink inkslinger in like flynn in limbo in loco parentis in macy-s window in medias res in mufti innings innocuous desuetude inoculate in one ear and out the other in over your head insane asylums insane root insect inseminate inside track in situ