Show/Hide Menu
Hide/Show Apps
anonymousUser
Logout
Türkçe
Türkçe
Search
Search
Login
Login
OpenMETU
OpenMETU
About
About
Açık Bilim Politikası
Açık Bilim Politikası
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Browse
Browse
By Issue Date
By Issue Date
Authors
Authors
Titles
Titles
Subjects
Subjects
Communities & Collections
Communities & Collections
A Rhetorical Narratological Approach to the Treatment of Crime and Criminals in Great Expectations
Date
2018-06-01
Author
NAZLİ, ELZEM
Öztabak Avcı, Elif
Metadata
Show full item record
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
.
Item Usage Stats
3
views
0
downloads
This paper aims to present a rhetorical narratological analysis of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861) with a specific focus on the issue of crime and the figure of the criminal. There are many studies pointing out that the novel provides the reader with an anatomy of crime and the criminal; yet, its differing treatment of the criminal characters and its possible effects over the reader have not received much narratological attention. Although Magwitch, Compeyson, and Molly can all be equally considered criminals in the eyes of the law, they are positioned differently in the text. The novel arouses genuine sympathy for Magwitch, whereas it incites implacable hatred towards Compeyson and utter indifference to Molly. The novel’s sympathetic attitude to Magwitch, a socially-marginalized character, aims to invite the reader’s attention to inequalities in the juridical system; however, it does not offer a subversive treatment of the issue of crime because it stays within the confines of bourgeois morality: first, as a Bildungsroman, it underlines the individual’s education resulting in his/her integration into society; second, the implied author does not centralize another socially-disadvantaged character: Molly. As a lower-class woman, she remains voiceless in the margins of the text and her position as a criminal is not contested at all.
Subject Keywords
Charles Dickens
,
Great Expectations
,
Crime
,
Rhetorical narratology
,
The Implied author
,
Bildungsroman
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/46016
Journal
Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1501/dtcfder_0000001604
Collections
Department of Foreign Language Education, Article