At the heart of Charles Dickens' creative vision in his works is the formative influence of fairy tales that entered Dickens' imagination from his early childhood and later gave shape to his fiction. Dickens' exposure to and awareness of fairy tale literature gave him a basis for the various formulas his books follow, many of which run parallel to basic fairy tale plots.
The book traces through Dickens' childhood and adult life focusing on three of the novels that helped shape his career: Oliver Twist, Hard Times, and Great Expectations. The book tells of Dickens' early obsession with fairy tale literature, and shows the connection between the original fairy tales of Charles Perrault and Madame D'Aulnoy and later, the Brothers Grimm, to the themes of Dickensian literature. Hans Christian Anderson, a close friend and guest of the Dickens' family was of particular interest to Charles' work in defending the value of fairy tales, which, at one time, were actually banned from England. The book delves into the well-publicized split between Dickens and one of his illustrators George Cruikshank, when, in 1853, as Elaine Ostry states, "The fairy tale drove the last nail into a longstanding friendship."
Once Upon Charles Dickens also contains a psychoanalytic analysis of the methodology of the common fairy tale in relieving the subconscious manifestations of societal fears. The reader will see how Dickens used fairy tales themes in his novels in much the same respect, by taking everyday people and telling their story in a way that makes them extraordinary.
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