The ideal of middle class British masculinity and the representative of the new Victorian respectability, the ″gentleman″ was difficult to define amidst the class mobility and social change of the nineteenth century. Was the gentleman to be identified by class and by money\ulcorner By behavior and clothing\ulcorner By religion and morality\ulcorner This essay focuses on the problem of the ″gentleman″ as it was debated in the Victorian era and as it was reflected in the biography and work of the mid-nineteenth century's most important English writer, Charles Dickens. I examine the critical debate surrounding the Victorian idea of the ″gentleman″ by comparing the arguments of Shirley Robin Letwin's The Gentleman in Trollope(1982) and Robin Gilmour's The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel(1981). Letwin views the ″gentleman″ as largely transcending class structure, while Gilmour's more historically-conscious view locates the gentleman as emerging out of, and even enabling, the class negotiations of this period. Against the backdrop of such debates, I discuss Charles Dickens's struggles with the idea of the gentleman in theory and in practice. In his novels, especially his semi-autobiographical bildungsromane about the growth and development of boys into adulthood, Dickens prominently engages with the identity and definition of the gentleman. As I demonstrate in this essay, this interest originated from Dickens's own childhood trauma and his subsequent drive to attain gentility, a necessity complicated by the vicissitudes of his personal and professional life
목차
The English Gentleman in the Victorian Age Gentility and Its Others in Dickens Works Cited abstract
키워드
gentleman; Charles Dickens; masculinity; class; gentility; Victorian period; biography; Robin Gilmour; Shirley Robin Letwin
국제언어인문학회 [INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR HUMANISTIC STUDIES IN LANGUAGE]
설립연도
2000
분야
인문학>언어학
소개
국제언어인문학회는 '언어를 통한 인문학 연구'의 필요성에 동감하는 여러 전공분야 학자들의 뜻을 담고 있습니다. 언어에 초점을 맞추는 것은, 다양한 전공분야의 참여에서 생겨날 수 있는 '이질적 집합'의 상황을 극복하기 위한 장치입니다. 현재로서는 작은 불씨를 지핀 것에 불과합니다. 그러나 이렇게 일구어진 불꽃이 새로운 학풍의 바람결에 커다란 섬광으로 빛나게 될 날이 올 것을 우리는 확신합니다. 우리의 학회와 학술지는 인문학 불변의 가치와 시대적 사명을 인식하는 국내외의 학자들을 향해 활짝 개방되어 있습니다. 특정 전공의 범위를 넘어서서 철학, 문학, 언어학, 종교, 역사, 문화, 예술 등의 시각에서 언어의 본질을 토론할 기회가 될 것입니다.