Intrusion of Pickwickian Simplicity in Our Mutual Friend

James R. Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Professor of English, University of Southern California

Note 6 to Chapter 9 of the author's Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter which Clarendon Press published in 1972. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author and of the Clarendon Press, which retains copyright.

I do not mean to suggest that the vision of Pickwick is in any way inferior. But, since the two novels work on very different assumptions and ask very different questions, the mixture is incongruous and startling.

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Last modified: 3 May 2001