Abstract
The rhythmic patterns of Dickens’ fictional language fall, whatever the prose modality concerned, under two headings: on the one hand, that writing which, although not presented in the conventional manner of poetry, makes use, nevertheless, of the metrical patterns and diction of that world, and, on the other, the schematic patterns springing from the regular reiteration of certain syntactic figurations.
The right rhythm in prose is every bit as important as the right metre in a poem.1
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Notes
Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul (London, 1973) p. 194.
Cf. Park Honan, ‘Metrical Prose in Dickens’, VNL, 28 (Autumn, 1965) pp. 1–3, for a discussion of the historical development involved.
When Dickens started his writing career, this particular tradition was already being ardently followed by such of his contemporaries, for instance, as Bulwer Lytton and Disraeli, with some appalling results, one might add. (Cf. Benjamin Disraeli, The Young Duke (London, 1831) and Bulwer Lytton, Eugene Aram (London, 1832).) Small wonder, then, that the young author — awake to all influences — just absorbed this one as he did so many others at the time.
Cf. W. J. B. Owen, ‘Mrs. Gamp’s Poetic Diction’, Dickensian (May, 1971) pp. 81–96, for a detailed discussion of this aspect of Mrs Gamp’s speech.
John Gross, Dickens and the 20th Century (London, 1962) p. xv.
Both Angus Wilson (‘prefiguration of Joycean linguistic experiments’, Dickens Critics, pp. 378–9) and Earle Davis (‘a foreshadowing of Joyce’s Molly Bloom … Stream-of-consciousness is just around the corner’, The Flint and the Flame (London, 1964) p. 48) rightly refer to Dickens’ significant anticipation of the stream-of-consciousness technique in the language of such characters. In view of the pronounced dramatic qualities exhibited by Mrs Lirriper’s idiolect — exemplified in the first place, as we have seen, in that rhythmic patterning which, especially when read aloud, gives coherent shape to her unending verbal outbursts — it is a source of wonder that Dickens did not work up either or both of these Christmas tales into public readings, the more so when one considers the strong vein of sentiment (always popular with his audiences) running through both.
Despite their lack of a concrete narrative, it is certainly no coincidence that Chopin’s four ‘Ballades’ are all in either 64 or 68 time in which they all unfold their tale [giving] an easy movement, a flowing and sometimes deceptively gentle persuasiveness to the strange events which present themselves’ (Alan Rawsthorne, ‘Ballades, Fantasy and Scherzos’ from The Chopin Companion, ed. Alan Walker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966) p. 43). The same words could surely also be applied to the Dickens passage.
W. A. Ward, ‘Language and Charles Dickens’, Listener, 23 May 1963, p. 874.
John Lucas, TheMelancholyMan (London, 1970) p. 150.
Cf. Amy Cruse, The Victorians and Their Books (London, 1935) ch. VIII.
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© 1985 Robert Golding
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Golding, R. (1985). Rhythmic Patterns. In: Idiolects in Dickens. Macmillan Studies in Victorian Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18021-9_4
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