"Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickens Charles)

4. COINCIDENCE

As you read, count the number of major coincidences in the plot.
Your response to the novel may depend on whether or not you can
accept, for example, Ernest Defarge turning up whenever a
Revolutionary leader is needed. Your hardest task may be swallowing
the several coincidences that occur in III, 8. Dickens defended his
use of this device. He felt, given a properly developed atmosphere,
that coincidences were natural, even inevitable.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES: SOURCES

Two very different works were the main influences on A Tale of Two
Cities. In his preface Dickens credits The Frozen Deep, a melodrama
by his friend Wilkie Collins, and The French Revolution, a famous
history by another friend, Thomas Carlyle. Drawing inspiration from
others doesn't mean that Dickens copied or plagiarized. His own
fertile imagination and ability to fuse ideas and select details
produced an original, moving novel.

Staged by Dickens, friends, and family as an amateur theatrical, The
Frozen Deep centers on a triangle. Two young men, both members of an
arctic expedition, love the same woman; one gives up his life so the
other may enjoy happiness with her. Here is the germ of Sydney
Carton's renunciation of Lucie, and his final sacrifice.

At Thomas Carlyle's instructions, Dickens read through two cartloads
of scholarly tomes on the French Revolution. Yet for his novel he
returned again and again to Carlyle's "wonderful book." The contrast
between reality and unreality owes something to Carlyle, as does the
thesis of Sydney Carton's final vision: a new, better age will rise
from the ashes of the old.

Among the characters with roots in Carlyle's account are Ernest
Defarge, who seems to be a composite of several leaders, and Dr.
Manette, who was suggested by an actual, pathetic letter discovered
in a cell of the Bastille.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES: CHAPTER 1

Here is Dickens' voice, introducing the story he's about to tell. No
action or characters are presented, but the scene is set: England
and France, 1775. We encounter important themes--and one of the most
unforgettable opening paragraphs in English literature.

NOTE: AN INSTANCE OF PARALLELISM "It was the best of times, it was
the worst of times...," the opening words, form a good example of
parallelism--the repetition, for emphasis, of a grammatical
structure. Here and elsewhere Dickens relies on parallelism to