This paper explores the message hidden in the ghost characters in Dickens'A Christmas Carol. There are an immense number of books about ghost both in Chinese and British literature. Ghost is an imaginary afterlife...This paper explores the message hidden in the ghost characters in Dickens'A Christmas Carol. There are an immense number of books about ghost both in Chinese and British literature. Ghost is an imaginary afterlife of human being; similarly novel is also a kind of fiction based on the real life. Therefore,when novels are used to shape the ghost images,there will be a powerful and unstrained space produced by the double-tier imagination. The ghost novels can also serve as a mirror of human society and speak of some problems in human life. So a better understanding of the ghost characters in literature can give us a deep insight into the society at the time when the story took place,as well as providing us a good chance of literature appreciation.Considering the role that the ghosts play in this novel,it should be called memory figures,developing Scrooge from a character wishing to shut out his past to one living in the past,the present,and the future. The first indication of his character can be derived from the remark that he takes "his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern" and then returns to his "gloomy suite of rooms ". The adjectives tell us that Scrooge should have a talent for remem?brance or rather a good memory. His humoral constitution predisposes him for it. The three ghosts,whose visitation Marley announced,each take Scrooge to places,to towns and buildings,the most traditional type of image in artificial memory. It is typical of these visits that Scrooge,like Vergil in Dante's Divine Comedy,becomes an invisible visitor,who enters the world of his past evoked by the memorial places. This immediate contact appears as a precondition for the reformative influence of the past on Scrooge. If we look back to an earlier Christmas story,which also preaches the change of heart,Dickens' new and specific frame of reference shows up even more clearly. (Cerny,257)展开更多
文摘This paper explores the message hidden in the ghost characters in Dickens'A Christmas Carol. There are an immense number of books about ghost both in Chinese and British literature. Ghost is an imaginary afterlife of human being; similarly novel is also a kind of fiction based on the real life. Therefore,when novels are used to shape the ghost images,there will be a powerful and unstrained space produced by the double-tier imagination. The ghost novels can also serve as a mirror of human society and speak of some problems in human life. So a better understanding of the ghost characters in literature can give us a deep insight into the society at the time when the story took place,as well as providing us a good chance of literature appreciation.Considering the role that the ghosts play in this novel,it should be called memory figures,developing Scrooge from a character wishing to shut out his past to one living in the past,the present,and the future. The first indication of his character can be derived from the remark that he takes "his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern" and then returns to his "gloomy suite of rooms ". The adjectives tell us that Scrooge should have a talent for remem?brance or rather a good memory. His humoral constitution predisposes him for it. The three ghosts,whose visitation Marley announced,each take Scrooge to places,to towns and buildings,the most traditional type of image in artificial memory. It is typical of these visits that Scrooge,like Vergil in Dante's Divine Comedy,becomes an invisible visitor,who enters the world of his past evoked by the memorial places. This immediate contact appears as a precondition for the reformative influence of the past on Scrooge. If we look back to an earlier Christmas story,which also preaches the change of heart,Dickens' new and specific frame of reference shows up even more clearly. (Cerny,257)
