Gowan Dawson’s “Dickens, Dinosaurs, and Design.”

摘要

Although he is more likely remembered for coining the term “dinosaur,” Richard Owenalso influenced the writings of his friend Charles Dickens. Gowan Dawson offers anhistorical overview of Owen, noted British anatomist and paleontologist, and suggestsDickens incorporated Owen’s paleontological analogies into his own “compositionalpractices” as a response to criticism of his serial novels (769). Dickens’s early workswere often criticized for an “absence of design,” while “his most meticulously plannednovels [were perceived] as potentially monstrous amalgams, joining together randomand incongruous parts” (770).Dickens suffered from the effects writing, publishing, and reading ininstallments had on narrative function and structure. Serial publication ensured anincompleteness and lack of closure, and required readers to assemble installments assequential parts of a disconnected whole. What Dickens searched for was an adaptivemodel for improving upon the fragmentary form of serial fiction. As Dawsonpersuasively suggests, “What was necessary, in both paleontological reconstructionsand the composition of serial fiction, was a flawless design that would preclude thepossibility of such egregious conjunctions and instead ensure the harmony andproportion of the perfectly integrated structure” (770).