Literature Network » Charles Dickens

Dickens with Kant and Sade. (violence in Charles Dickens' novels)

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From: Style
Date: 19950922
Author:Netto, Jeffrey A.

As the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius.

Thomas De Quincey, "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts"

In effect, the father's death opens the reign of violence. In choosing violence - and that is what it's all about from the beginning - and violence against the father, the son - or patricidal writing - cannot fail to expose himself, too. All this is done in order to ensure that the dead father, first victim and ultimate resource, not be there. Being-there is always a property of paternal speech. And the site of a ...

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