Literature or Entertainment?
Posted by Stolzi on December 14, 1997 at 19:19:56:
In response to A Christmas Carol, written by Kate on December 14, 1997 at 15:13:41
] So what do you think. Is it great literature or sentimental schmaltz?
] Or something in between?
It is a wonderful entertainment. And more, it is a mythopoeic work, i.e. Dickens has here created characters who live on because they mean something to everyone.
One might quote Thackeray's review of the later Christmas story by D, The Cricket on the Hearth, to illustrate the spirit in which I for one approach Carol:
"To us it appears it is a good Christmas book, illuminated with extra gas, crammed with extra bonbons, French plums and sweetnesses ... As a Christmas pageant which you witness in the arm-chair -- your private box by the fireside -- the piece is excellent, incomparably brilliant, and dexterous."
Now. Who will be the first to cry "Bah! Humbug!" :)
Later, more about the serious side of Dickens and of this work... Meanwhile let me wish to all here, lest I forget:
"A Merry Christmas, every one!"
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