Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit

Abstract

Barnaby Rudge,¹ one of Dickens’ two historical novels, is onl partly in the ‘Newgate’ tradition popular at the time. It manifest much, though, of Carlyle’s influence as well as that of Scott. O more importance for this discussion is the fact that for the firs time in his fiction, Dickens consciously set out to stabilise hi methods. A close examination of the two sections of the book taken together with the two plots, shows that they evince considerable skill in their interweaving. In addition, the narrative voice is in many ways now more distinctive, less self-conscious New, for instance, is a beautifully applied poetic mode. However in this voice it is the superb, powerfully dramatic descriptions o the mob violence in the anti-Catholic Gordon riots of 1780 whicl form the high point of the novel. The reader is carried along — overwhelmed is a better word — by a rhetorical technique whicl achieves its combination of frenzied activity, terror and tension through the accumulation of sickening effects, through relentles syntactic repetition, and through a cinematographic technique focusing now here, now there, now from afar, now close up Moreover, we can also find Dickens’ first tentative, often very effective attempts at symbolic writing.