The Pickwick Papers: Difference between revisions

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First published in 1837 (but set in 1827-28, a fact Dickens [[Present Day Past|sometimes forgot in his writing]]), it was originally a 20-part serial. It follows the misadventures of a bunch of comedy clichés as they go about southern England. Along the way, a variety of interesting side-stories are related.

 

It wasn't doing too well, sales wise, until Samuel Weller entered the story. Weller, an early example of the chirpy Cockney archetype, is prone to punching people with little provocation, dispensing Cockney wisdom and engaging in an entire series of "as the X said" jokes, but adding something before and afterwards, such as:

 

As can be seen from the above quote, the Cockney accent has changed a lot since 1837; without Dickens's habit of using [[Funetik Aksent]] to show Weller's pronunciation, this fact would be unknown to modern linguists.

 

Includes a character, Joe, who is rather obese and falls asleep frequently with no warning. This is exactly like the condition [http://www.emedicine.com/ped/TOPIC1627.HTM Obesity-Hypoventilation Syndrome], which is also known as "Pickwickian syndrome" because of it.

* [[Adult Child]] (Tony Weller)

* [[Amoral Attorney]]

* [[Narrative Profanity Filter]]

* [[No Communities Were Harmed]] ("Eatanswill"<ref>Yes, think about the name</ref> the location of the by-election is stated to be a disguised East Anglian town. It's generally thought to be either Sudbury or Ipswich. G.K. Chesterton, for this part, thought Dickens was just satirising England in general]]

* [[Present Day Past]] (Dickens has characters referencing events that haven't occurred in their world yet)

* [[Strange Syntax Speaker]] (Jingle)

 

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