Models
Mary Weller, Charles Dickens's nurse, recalling her famous charge's occupations as a child, said: "Little Charles was a terrible boy to read."
"In the young Charles Dickens's reading we have in some ways the very core of his novels...the young Charles came upon the great picaresque novels of the eighteenth century – Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, their French counterpart Gil Blas, and their great predecessor Don Quixote. Don Quixote's connection with Mr Pickwick, as Dostoevsky saw, is basic. With Don Quixote, of course, goes Sancho Panza, who with the reinforcement of the faithful, shrewd, worldly servants of the young heroes Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, Roderick Random and the rest, goes to make up Sam Weller."
Read more about this topic: The Pickwick Papers
Famous quotes containing the word models:
“The greatest and truest models for all orators ... is Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great speeches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say: Tell your children that they are very naughty—much naughtier than most children; point to the young people of some acquaintances as models of perfection, and impress your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority. You carry so many more guns than they do that they cannot fight you. This is called moral influence and it will enable you to bounce them as much as you please.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisan intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)