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Chapter 4 - Why Always Dorothea? The Rhetorical Question in Canon and Archive

from Part I - Aspects of Style

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2021

By
Sarah Allison
Edited by
Daniel Tyler
Daniel Tyler
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

This chapter considers the changing but enduring fortunes of didacticism across the Victorian period, from Romanticism before it to Modernism after it; it does so by investigating the function of the rhetorical question as it is shaped by scenes of correction in didactic fiction. The chapter shows that those scenes of correction exemplified in pre-Victorian novels are recast satirically by Dickens and Brontë, among others, while the tradition of didacticism remains an influence upon Thackeray’s narrative style.

Keywords

DickensBrontëThackeraydidacticismrhetorical questionsatire
Type
Chapter
Information
On Style in Victorian Fiction , pp. 58 - 74
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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