Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users, please click the view more button below to purchase a copy of this dissertation from Proquest.
(Some titles may also be available free of charge in our Open Access Dissertation Collection, so please check there first.)
The paradox of the solitary child in Charles Dickens and Frank O'Connor
Abstract
The paradoxical principle I explore in the fiction of Dickens and O'Connor is perhaps best expressed this way: the archetype of the child reveals that isolation, smallness, and apparent insignificance can create connectedness, expansiveness, and meaning. The archetype surfaces in any character that suffers these first three fates, be it the solitary child or the seemingly insignificant, outcast adult (or "little man," in O'Connor's words). Central to the study is my suggestion that the small, often childlike narrative consciousness O'Connor describes as fundamental--even exclusive--to the short story can exist in the novel, as well. The "little man" of the short story, O'Connor writes, "impose(s) his image over that of the crucified Jesus" (The Lonely Voice 16). I believe that by looking at the way in which O'Connor characterizes the paradoxical rhythm of smallness and expansiveness, as well as the way that rhythm manifests itself mythologically, we can open up new avenues (through the small portal of the childlike figure) to larger works of fiction, as well. The fiction of Charles Dickens, which includes some of the most sprawling novels in all of literature, becomes illuminated in the context of the myth and the short story. Dickens's short installments (a feature of the literary tradition of nineteenth-century England); his oral, fireside narrative voice; and his extensive depiction of small and childlike characters all reveal the explosion of events in tiny but potent milieus.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature|Comparative literature|Modern literature|Literature
Recommended Citation
Neary, Michael Joseph, "The paradox of the solitary child in Charles Dickens and Frank O'Connor" (1992). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9233119.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9233119