Beschreibung
This study explores Thackeray as an allegorist rather than a
mere satirist. In doing so, it also enriches and extends
current debates on allegorical theory. Allegorical
Thackeray demonstrates that his major novels Vanity
Fair, Pendennis and The Newcomes go
beyond the satirical and parodic techniques used in his
early works and can be interpreted as secularised successors
of traditional reader-based Christian allegories. With this
human-allegorical focus Thackeray stands against an
excessive emphasis on the culturing of the individual self,
society and the nation which can be perceived in the works
of his forerunners and of other Victorian writers, such as
Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Anthony Trollope.
Thackeray certainly did not believe in the idea of one
single authoritarian `truth’, but he seems to suggest that,
if religious morality is completely replaced by national,
social or idiosyncratic notions of `morality’, this could
lead to detrimental distortions of more lasting and
encompassing values.
Ellen Redling teaches English literature and
culture at the University of Heidelberg.
