ELLB4: Text Transformation

1. ELLB4: Text Transformation This coursework unit requires students to choose two literary works from the selection of prescribed authors in this powerpoint and transform them into different genres. This powerpoint will take you through the prescribed authors that you can choose from. Remember that you have to choose two texts and that these must be from different genres.

2. PROSE

3. JONATHAN SWIFT • Key Works (18th to 19th Century) • A Modest Proposal • Gulliver’s Travels A Modest Proposal, is a satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies.This satirical hyperbole mocks heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as Irish policy in general. • Style: • A mainly satirical style using his works to comment on social or religious issues. • A convincing rhetorical style using various methods of argument. Gulliver's Travels is an adventure story (in reality, a misadventure story) involving several voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, who, because of a series of mishaps en route to recognized ports, ends up, instead, on several unknown islands living with people and animals of unusual sizes, behaviors, and philosophies, but who, after each adventure, is somehow able to return to his home in England where he recovers from these unusual experiences and then sets out again on a new voyage.

4. Extract from Gulliver’s Travels ‘It is a very justifiable Cause of War to invade a Country after the People have been wasted by Famine, destroyed by Pestilence, or embroiled by Factions among themselves. It is justiable to enter into War against our nearest Ally, when one of his Towns lies convenient to us, or a Territory of Land that would render our Dominions round and complete. If a Prince sends Forces into a Nation, where the People are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to Death, and make Slaves of the rest, in order to civilise and reduce them from their barbarous Way of living. It is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent Practice, when one Prince desires the assistance of another to secure him against an Invasion, that the Assistant, when he hath driven out the Invader, should seize on the Dominions [240] himself, and kill, imprison or banish the Prince he came to relieve. Alliance of Blood or Marriage, is a sufficient Cause of War between Princes; and the nearer the Kindred is, the greater is their Disposition to quarrel: poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud; and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance. For these Reasons, the Trade of a Soldier is held the most honourable of all others: Because a Soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold Blood as many of his own Species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.’

5. JANE AUSTEN • Key Works (18th to 19th Century) • Sense and Sensibility • Pride and Prejudice • Emma • Mansfield Park • -Northanger Abbey Sense and Sensibility is set in southwest England, London and Kent between 1792 and 1797,and portrays the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. The novel follows the young ladies to their new home, a meagre cottage on a distant relative's property, where they experience love, romance and heartbreak. The philosophical resolution of the novel is ambiguous: the reader must decide whether sense and sensibility have truly merged. • Style: • New type of narrative voice: Free Indirect Speech • Realism • Social commentary Emmais a novel about the flaws of youth and the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters.

6. Extract from Sense and Sensibility "The whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks. The high downs, which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to seek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy alternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their superior beauties; and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the confinement which the settled rain of the two preceding days had occasioned. The weather was not tempting enough to draw the two others from their pencil and their book, in spite of Marianne's declaration that the day would be lastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud would be drawn off from their hills; and the two girls set off together.

7. THE BRONTËS Charlotte's most famous novel depicts the emotional and spiritual development of the heroine, which is mirrored by her physical journeyings throughout the book. It describes her search for self-worth, for identity as an individual and for economic independence, in a world which did not expect such ambitions in women. • Key Works (19th Century) • Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) • Villette(Charlotte Bronte) • Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) • Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Bronte) The structure of Wuthering Heights is complex: the narrator is Lockwood, Heathcliff's shadowy tenant at Thrushcross Grange. He learns the history of the Earnshaws and the Lintons from Ellen ('Nellie') Dean, who has been a servant at both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and whose account fills most of the book. Within that story, the characters come to life and speak with their own individual voices. • Style: • Realism/Naturalism • Social commentary • Complex and refined use of language and syntax • Elaborate phrasing

8. Extract from Wuthering Heights I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in—let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton) 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window.

9. THOMAS HARDY Bathsheba Everdene, capable, romantic, and vain, is an orphan living with an aunt. When Gabriel Oak, a prosperous sheep farmer, proposes, she almost accepts him but draws back when he pictures married life as soberly domestic. Circumstances reverse their fortunes. Bathsheba inherits a large farm, and Oak loses his. He becomes her shepherd, faithfully trying to guide her and guard her interests. The story continues as further suitors complicate the story. A detailed rural setting. • Key Works (19th-20th Century) • Far From the Madding Crowd • Tess of the D’Urbervilles • The Return of the Native • Jude the Obscure Jude the Obscure is a novel that tells the history of Jude Fawley. After a failed marriage, Jude has a relationship with his cousin Sue and start a family. Their relationship turns to tragedy when their oldest son, a depressive boy they've nicknamed "Little Father Time," realizes the economic difficulties his parents are facing--with so many mouths to feed. To ease the burden, he kills his brothers and sisters and then hangs himself. He leaves a misspelled letter, "Done because we are too menny.“ The story continues as the characters try to face the tragedy. • Style: • Commanding and intense use of language • Characters ruled by nature and Victorian expectations • Setting: Usually bleak and forbidding Dorset landscapes

10. Extract from Jude the Obscure Though Farmer Troutham had just hurt him, he was a boy who could not himself bear to hurt anything. He never brought home a nest of young birds without lying awake in misery half the night after, and often reinstating them and the nest in their original place the next morning. He could scarcely bear to see trees cut down or lopped, from a fancy that it hurt them; and late pruning, when the sap was up and the tree bled profusely, had been a positive grief to him in his infancy. This weakness of character, as it may be called, suggested that he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life should signify that all was well with him again. He carefully picked his way on tiptoe among the earthworms, without killing a single one.

11. R.L. STEVENSON Treasure Island: When young Jim Hawkins discovers a map showing the way to Captain Flint's treasure, he and Squire Trelawney set sail on the Hispaniola to search for the gold. Little do they know that among their crew is the dastardly pirate Long John Silver. Silver has a devious plan to keep the gold all to himself. Can brave Jim outwit the most infamous pirate ever to sail the high seas? Will he escape from Treasure Island alive? • Key Works (19th-20th Century) • Treasure Island • Kidnapped • Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Kidnapped: Orphaned and penniless, David Balfour sets out to find his last living relative, miserly and reclusive Uncle Ebenezer. But Ebenezer is far from welcoming, and David narrowly escapes being murdered before he is kidnapped and imprisoned on a ship bound for the Carolinas. When the ship is wrecked, David, along with the fiery rebel Alan Breck, makes his way back across the treacherous Highland terrain on a quest for justice. Through his powerful depiction of the two very different central characters - the romantic Breck and the rational Whig David - Stevenson dramatized a conflict at the heart of Scottish culture, as well as creating an unforgettable adventure story. • Style: • Discussion of morality • Use of polar opposites • Multiple narratives

12. Extract from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was surprised to recognize in him a certain Mr Hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr Hyde broke out of all bounds, and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot, and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. At the honor of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted.

13. KATE CHOPIN Therese Lafirme, a young widow who runs a plantation in Louisiana, falls in love with David Hosmer, a man who runs the sawmill. When she finds out he is divorced, however, her strong moral and religious convictions make it impossible for her to accept his marriage proposal. • Key Works (19th-20th Century) • At Fault • The Awakening The Awakening: Heralded as one of the first instances of feminist literature and rejected at its time of publication by the literary set on grounds of moral distaste, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening caused consternation in 1899. Constrained and confined by the limitations surrounding marriage and motherhood in the late 1800s, Edna Pontellier begins to challenge the notion of femininity through her thoughts and actions. Questioning her love for her husband, and opening herself up to the possibilities of other men and a life outside of societal convention leads to a gradual awakening of her desires. Chopin’s fascinating exploration of one woman challenging the expectation that surrounds her is powerful, daring and ultimately tragic in its conclusions. • Style: • Use of imagery • Parallel sentence structures • Themes: women's search for selfhood, for self-discovery or identity. Many of her stories comment on women's revolt against conformity. • Regional dialects

14. Extract from The Awakening Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a characteristic hitherto contrary to her nature. Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life--that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions. That summer at Grand Isle she began to loosen a little the mantle of reserve that had always enveloped her. There may have been--there must have been--influences, both subtle and apparent, working in their several ways to induce her to do this; but the most obvious was the influence of Adele Ratignolle. The excessive physical charm of the Creole had first attracted her, for Edna had a sensuous susceptibility to beauty. Then the candor of the woman's whole existence, which every one might read, and which formed so striking a contrast to her own habitual reserve--this might have furnished a link. Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.

15. P.G. Wodehouse Blandings: In this wonderfully fat omnibus, which seems to span the dimensions of the Empress of Blandings herself (the fattest pig in Shropshire and surely all England), the whole world of Blandings Castle is spread out for our delectation: the engagingly dotty Lord Emsworth and his enterprising brother Galahad, his terrifying sister Lady Constance, Beach the butler (his voice 'like tawny port made audible'), James Wellbeloved, the gifted but not always sober pigman, and Lord Emsworth's secretary the Efficient Baxter, with gleaming spectacles, whose attempts to bring order to the Castle always end in disarray. • Key Works (20th Century) • The World of Blandings • The Jeeves Omnibus • Style: • Abbreviated words • References to Shakespeare or Latin • Unique blend of contemporary London clubroom slang with elegant, classically-informed drawing-room English The Jeeves Omnibus: Luckily for us, Bertie Wooster manages to retain Jeeve's services through all the vicissitudes of purple socks and policeman's helmets, and here, gathered together for the first time, is an omnibus of Jeeves novels and stories comprising three of the funniest books ever written: Thank You, Jeeves, The code of the Woosters and The Inimirable Jeeves.

16. Extract from Right Ho, Jeeves "What-ho, Gussie," I said. You couldn't have told it from my manner, but I was feeling more than a bit nonplussed. The spectacle before me was enough to nonplus anyone. I mean to say, this Fink-Nottle, as I remembered him, was the sort of shy, shrinking goop who might have been expected to shake like an aspen if invited to so much as a social Saturday afternoon at the vicarage. And yet here he was, if one could credit one's senses, about to take part in a fancy-dress ball, a form of entertainment notoriously a testing experience for the toughest. And he was attending that fancy-dress ball, mark you--not, like every other well-bred Englishman, as a Pierrot, but as Mephistopheles--this involving, as I need scarcely stress, not only scarlet tights but a pretty frightful false beard. Rummy, you'll admit. However, one masks one's feelings. I betrayed no vulgar astonishment, but, as I say, what-hoed with civil nonchalance. He grinned through the fungus--rather sheepishly, I thought. "Oh, hullo, Bertie." "Long time since I saw you. Have a spot?"

17. William Trevor The story of Lucy Gault: Summer, 1921. Eight-year-old Lucy Gault clings to the glens and woods above Lahardane - the home her family is being forced to abandon. She knows the Gaults are no longer welcome in Ireland and that danger threatens. Lucy, however, is headstrong and decides that somehow she must force her parents into staying. But the path she chooses ends in disaster. One chance event, unwanted and unexpected, will blight the lives of the Gaults for years to come and bind each of them in different ways to this one moment in time, to this wild stretch of coast . . . Key Works (20th-21st Century) The Story of Lucy Gault Love and SummerTwo LivesThe Children of Dynmouth Death in Summer • Style: • Chekovian pattern • Gothic elements • Novels contain several protagonists of equal importance • Common themes in his works are the tensions between Protestant landowners and Catholic tenants. The Children of Dynmouth: The plot follows Timothy Gedge, a socially inept yet intrusive teenage boy as he wanders around the dull seaside town of Dynmouth, spying on the town's residents. At first this behaviour is seen as merely annoying, even comical, until people begin to realise that his purpose may not be as innocent as initially thought.

18. Extract from The Story of Lucy Gault Captain EverardGault wounded the boy in the right shoulder on the night of June the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-one. Aiming above the trespassers' heads in the darkness, he fired the single shot from an upstairs window and then watched the three figures scuttling off, the wounded one assisted by his companions. When daylight came on the morning after the shooting, blood could be seen on the sea pebbles of the turn-around in front of the house .... The pebbles were raked, a couple of bucketfuls that had been discoloured in the accident taken away. Captain Gault thought it would be all right then ....

19. Margaret Atwood ALIAS GRACE: ‘Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.' Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling victim? Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery. Key Works (20th-21st Century) The Handmaids Tale Alias Grace The Edible Woman The Blind Assassin The Year of the Flood • Style: • Absence of quotation marks to separate speech from thoughts and feelings, particularly in memories • Exact, vivid and witty style • Typical heroine of modern urban women • Can be sarcastic comments on society as well as quests for identity for her characters. The Year of the Flood: The sun brightens in the east, reddening the blue-grey haze that marks the distant ocean. The vultures roosting on the hydro poles fan out their wings to dry them. the air smells faintly of burning. The waterless flood - a manmade plague - has ended the world. But two young women have survived: Ren, a young dancer trapped where she worked, in an upmarket sex club (the cleanest dirty girls in town); and Toby, who watches and waits from her rooftop garden. The novel continues as the search the world around them.

20. Extract from The Handmaid’s Tale So, you're the new one, she said. She didn't step aside to let me in, she just stood there in the doorway, blocking the entrance. She wanted me to feel that I could not come into the house unless she said so. There is push and shove, these days, over such toeholds. Yes, I said. Leave it on the porch. She said this to the Guardian, who was carrying my bag. The bag was red vinyl and not large. There was another bag, with the winter cloak and heavier dresses, but that would be coming later. The Guardian set down the bag and saluted her. Then I could hear his footsteps behind me, going back down the walk, and the click of the front gate, and I felt as if a protective arm were being withdrawn. The threshold of a new house is a lonely place. She waited until the car started up and pulled away. I wasn't looking at her face, but at the part of her I could see with my head lowered: her blue waist, thickened, her left hand on the ivory head of her cane, the large diamonds on the ring finger, which must once have been fine and was still finely kept, the fingernail at the end of the knuckly finger filed to a gentle curving point. It was like an ironic smile, on that finger; like something mocking her. You might as well come in, she said. She turned her back on me and limped down the hall. Shut the door behind you

21. Angela Carter Key Works (20th-21st Century) The Bloody Chamber (short stories) Nights at the Circus The Magic Toyshop The Bloody Chamber: All of the stories share a common theme of being closely based upon fairytales or folk tales. However, Angela Carter has stated: My intention was not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories.[ The anthology contains ten stories: "The Bloody Chamber", "The Courtship of Mr Lyon", "The Tiger's Bride", "Puss-in-Boots", "The Erl-King", "The Snow Child", "The Lady of the House of Love", "The Werewolf", "The Company of Wolves" and "Wolf-Alice". • Style: • Magical realism • Transforms the Fairy Tale tradition • Post Feminism: women’s roles in relationships and sexuality • Some elements of gothic fiction Nights at the Circus: The novel focuses on the life and exploits of Sophie Fevvers, a woman who is – or so she would have people believe – a Cockney virgin, hatched from an egg laid by unknown parents and ready to develop fully fledged wings. At the time of the story, she has become a celebrated aerialist, and she captivates the young journalist Jack Walser, who runs away with the circus and falls into a world that his journalistic exploits had not prepared him to encounter.

22. Extract from The Magic Toyshop “Everything went black in the shocking folds of his embrace. She was very startled and near to sobbing.'Caw, caw,' echoed his raincoat.'Don't be frightened,' he said. 'It is only poor Finn, who will do you no harm.'She recovered herself a little, though she was still trembling. She could see her own face reflected in little in the black pupils of his subaqueous eyes. She still looked the same. She saluted herself. He was only a little taller than she and their eyes were almost level. Remotely, she wished him three inches taller. Or four. She felt the warm breath from his wild beast's mouth softly, against her cheek. She did not move. Stiff, wooden, and unresponsive, she stood in his arms and watched herself in his eyes. It was a comfort to see herself as she thought she looked.'Oh, get it over with, get it over with,' she urged furiously under her breath.He was grinning like Pan in a wood. He kissed her, closing his eyes so that she could not see herself any more. His lips were wet and rough, cracked. It might have been anybody, kissing her, and besides, she did not know him well, if at all. She wondered why he was doing this, putting his mouth on her own undesiring one, softly moving his body against her. What was the need? She felt a long way away from him, and superior, also.”

23. HanifKureishi The Buddha of Suburbia is said to be very autobiographical. It is about Karim, a mixed-race teenager, who is desperate to escape suburban South London and make new experiences in London in the 1970s. Gladly, he takes the unlikely opportunity when a life in the theatre announces itself. When there is nothing left for him to do in London, he stays in New York for ten months. Returning to London, he takes on a part in a TV soap opera and the book leaves its reader on the verge of Thatcherism. Key Works (20th-21st Century) The Buddha of Surburbia The Black Album The Last Word Intimacy • Style: • Realism • Episodic • Based on historical events • Colloquialisms often used • Pop music referenced heavily. • Bildungsroman Intimacy: Set in contemporary London, the story tells why the protagonist wants to leave his family. The timespan of the novel is roughly 24 hours. He has lived with his partner for 6 years and has known her for 10, he is unhappy in his relationship and has had several affairs. The trigger for him deciding to leave his wife is more or less that his young lover one day says to him. "If you want me, I'm here". After that he gradually admits to himself that he's not happy with his wife.

24. Extract from The Buddha of Surburbia Karim Amir, seventeen years old, has his roots in India and England (his mum is English and his father Indian).  He is easily bored and "looking for trouble, any kind of movement, action and sexual interest" he can find. He is ready for everything. His little brother is called Allie. At the end of the day, his father (Haroon) hands his supper to his mum (Margaret) and starts to practise his yoga exercises. In contrast to the fit Haroon, Karim´s mother is a plump and unphysical women with a pale, round face. She is ashamed of her husband's crazy ideas and begs Karim to draw the curtain so that she is sure of nobody can watch his yoga training. That night they have a meeting with Mrs. Eva Kay where Haroon may speak on one or two aspects of oriental philosophy. However, Margaret does not want to come with him because, in her opinion, Eva just wants to see Haroon and will ignore her. To her mind she is much "too English" and Eva is fascinated by Indian people. Because of that Karim joins Haroon, after taking ages to get ready for the meeting. He choses turquois flared trousers, a blue and white flower-patterned see-through shirt, blue suede boots with Cuban heels, and a scarlet Indian waistcoat. Karim likes to be dressed crazily.

25. James Joyce Ulysses: This text chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904 (the day of Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle). The title alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer's poem and Joyce's novel. Key Works (20th-21st Century) Ulysses The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Dubliners The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: This novel is a highly autobiographical account of the adolescence of Stephen Dedalus, who reappears in Ulysses, and who comes to realize that before he can become a true artist, he must rid himself of the stultifying effects of the religion, politics and essential bigotry of his background in late 19th century Ireland. • Style: • Postmodern • Stream of consciousness • Parody • Use of classical mythology (in Ulysses) • Interior Monologue • Comment on society in Dublin

26. Extract from Ulysses Get a light snack in Davy Byrne’s. Stopgap. Keep me going. Had a good breakfast. —Roast and mashed here. —Pint of stout. Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff. He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street. Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill! Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting down with porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the street. John Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every mother’s son don’t talk of your provosts and provost of Trinity women and children cabmen priests parsons fieldmarshals archbishops. From Ailesbury road, Clyde road, artisans’ dwellings, north Dublin union, lord mayor in his gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair. My plate’s empty. After you with our incorporated drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton’s fountain. Rub off the microbes with your handkerchief.

27. Ian McEwan Enduring Love: One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose's calm, organised life is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them - something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose's beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness. Key Works (20th-21st Century) Enduring Love Atonement On Chesil Beach The InnocentThe Cement Garden The Innocent: The setting is Berlin. Into this divided city, wrenched between East and West, between past and present; comes twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team. Though only a pawn in an international plot that is never fully revealed to him, Leonard uses his secret work to escape the bonds of his ordinary life - and to lose his unwanted innocence. The promise of his new life begins to be fulfilled as Leonard becomes a crucial part of the surveillance team, while simultaneously being initiated into a new world of love and sex by Maria, a beautiful young German woman. It is a promise that turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening - a night when Leonard Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed. • Style: • Postmodern • Free Indirect style • Withholding of information to create tension • Sharp focus • Concentration of dialogue and action

28. Extract from Atonement “There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding, above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have.”

29. Charles Dickens Key Works (19th- 20th Century) Oliver Twist Bleak House Great Expectations David Copperfield The Old Curiosity Shop Bleak House is a novel published in 20 monthly instalments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon. The story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by a mostly omniscient narrator. Memorable characters include the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn, the friendly but depressive John Jarndyce, and the childish and disingenuous Harold Skimpole, as well as the likeable but imprudent Richard Carstone. • Style: • Repetition and long lists • Use of dialect • Use of figurative language to describe character, surroundings and weather. • Focus on detail • Rhythmic • Florid and poetic • Comic Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel. It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. It is set among the marshes of Kent and in London in the early to mid-1800s.From the outset, the reader is "treated" by the terrifying encounter between Pip, the protagonist, and the escaped convict, Abel Magwitch.Great Expectations is a graphic book, full of extreme imagery, poverty, prison ships, barriers and chains, and fights to the death.

30. Extract from Bleak House LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.