Interest In Drama Research Articles

"Vanity Fair" and The Celestial City

HESE rWO LINES from Chaucer's Parlement of Fowles might be a comment on movie Becky Sharp, one of early experiments in Technicolor. For everything of real interest in drama was taken from Thackeray's Fair. And melancholy splendor and sad humor of story were greater if one made second leap into past and saw as Thackeray once saw it. For Thackeray's public (even those who read his novel as an experiment in a new kind of fiction) recognized that title was taken from Bunyan's allegory, and overtones of that suggestion enriched complex harmonies of novel: ceased to be merely pencil sketches of nineteenth-century English society and was related to something deeper-it was generalized. Thackeray fully realized power of this title: Fair' is undoubtedly best of my books. It has best story, and for another thing, he added, the title is such a good one, you couldn't have a better.' He had ransacked his brain for a name for this novel, and it came upon him unawares, in middle of night, as if a voice had whispered, 'Vanity Fair.' He jumped out of bed and ran three times round his room, uttering as he went, Vanity Fair, Fair, Fair.2 The novel was a criticism of life presented