1. Lecture Two Objectives:
1- going deeper into the Victorian age, with reference to Charles' Dickens novels.
2- Focusing on the development of the novel.
3- giving a hint about Dickens' Oliver Twist
Assignment: The English novel has developed greatly during Victorian age. Explain.
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2. The Development of the Novel

3.       The novel as a literary genre has emerged with the publication of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722). Both are picaresque stories, as each is a sequence of episodes held together largely because they happen to one person. But the central character in both novels is so convincing and set in so solid and specific a world that Defoe is often credited with being the first writer of "realistic" fiction.

4. The Novel's Popularity

5. Since the eighteenth century, and particularly since the Victorian period, the novel, replacing poetry and drama, has become the most popular of literary forms, perhaps because it most closely represents the lives of the majority of people.

6. The novel became increasingly popular for two reasons: 1- Its social scope expanded to include characters and stories about the middle and working classes. 2-Because of its readership, which included a large percentage of women and servants, the novel became the form which most addressed the domestic and social concerns of these groups.

7. Charles Dickens Oliver Twist (1837)

8. Charles Dickens and Victorian Age

9. It is impossible to think of any university examination in English Literature at the Post graduate or even under graduate without a Dickens' novel prescribed for it. Most of the time, it is either David Copperfield or Oliver Twist.

10. These two novels are read almost at every stage
These two novels are read almost at every stage. The present critical study of Oliver Twist is designed to enable my students of faculty of Education, English Department, 6 of October University, to make an objective evaluation of the novel.

11. Actually the individual genius of Dickens is deeply influenced by the literary milieu to which he belongs. His imagination that is colored and directed by the literary tendencies and the quality of his own writing, is often governed by the popular taste of the Victorian era.

12. Dickens has read, with interest, the novels of the eighteenth century novelists: Fielding, Sterne, and Smollet. He had also read the Gothic novelists Horace Walpole, and Monk Lewis, and was influenced by their love of adventure and mystery.

13. Oliver Twist often presents the nightmarish and creepy atmosphere of Gothic novels, particularly when Dickens deals with the villainous characters, Fagin, Sikes and Monks. Thus the plot of Oliver Twist is deeply influenced by the dramatic mode, specially by popular melodrama, indirectly romantic and sensational, blessed with a happy ending.

14. This is what the Victorian public craved for
This is what the Victorian public craved for. The Victorian society disliked being shocked by their belief that all was right with the world. They were delighted more when all turned out well for their long suffering heroes and heroines.

15. Keeping his virtue uncontaminated, Oliver ultimately finds himself restored to social respectability and comfort. Nothing could have pleased the Victorians more than this kind of melodramatic plot.

16. Important characters in Oliver Twist

17. Characters in Oliver Twist can be divided into three groups, with Oliver, and Monks acting as a link among them. The characters, through whom the callousness and cruelty of the workhouse system are exposed, include Mr. Bumble, Mrs. Mann, Mrs. Corney the gentleman in the white waistcoat, Mr. Gamfield the Chimney sweep, Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry, Noah Claypole and Charlotte.

18. The second group belongs to the crime world
The second group belongs to the crime world. It includes Fagin, Sikes, the Artful Dodger, Charley Bates, Nancy, Toby Crackit, Tom Chilling and even the magistrate Mr. Fang. Monks figures in this group as well.

19. The third group belongs to the middle class world in which Oliver ultimately finds a place. Mr. brownlow, Mr. Grimwig, Mrs. Maylie, Rose, Harry Maylie, Dr. Losberne, Mrs. Bedwin, Giles and Brinies belong to this world. These characters, with the expectation of Giles and Brittles, are not very interesting and not very successfully drawn.