Why Always Dorothea? The Rhetorical Question in Canon and Archive

This chapter considers the changing but enduring fortunes of didacticism across the Victorian period, from Romanticism before it to Modernism after it; it does so by investigating the function of the rhetorical question as it is shaped by scenes of correction in didactic fiction. The chapter shows that those scenes of correction exemplified in pre-Victorian novels are recast satirically by Dickens and Brontë, among others, while the tradition of didacticism remains an influence upon Thackeray’s narrative style.

Aesthetics · Art · Canon · Classicism · Didacticism · Literature · Modernism (music) · Narrative · Period (music) · Rhetorical question · Romanticism · Style (visual arts) · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Literature: history, themes, analysis