Abstract
Martin Chuzzlewit is the culmination of Dickens’s early art. Together with Bleak House and Great Expectations it represents his greatest achievement, and because it is so much stranger than those works is arguably his most far-reaching masterpiece. It is the nineteenth century novel’s comic peak, just as The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina and Moby Dick are its tragic, humanistic and heroic peaks; and it is as revolutionary in its mode and technique as they are in theirs. Like the American and Russian masters Dickens is possessed by a pre-literary force that directs his creation. His comedy is primal, a kind of animal jubilation. Chuzzlewit is the most blatantly brilliant expression of comic energy in Western fiction.KeywordsNineteenth CenturyLady BirdLionel TrillingScarlet RunnerLife Assurance CompanyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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