Tale of Two Cities Lecture Notes

-Third city: Manchester
-Background on how Dicken's inspiration for TTC
-Summary: history of Rev, Paris, London and his reaction.
-Self sacrifice of the play transferred to TTC
-He explains how Dicken's was inspired by real people to make characters in TTC
-doubleness of character DC, CD and Charles Dickens.
-London: where he found his creativity, He loved it but disliked it, extremes of wealth and poverty.
-Paris: Charming and immense impression, perfectly distinct and unique character. He was overwhelmed by its secret character and how well the city expressed it. Very impressed by Paris although half the size of London, lacked the craziness of London.
-End of TTC: reminds readers of the old Paris with a bastil.
-ChD would visit Paris all the time for lengthy visits. Paris was a brilliant, modernizing city.
-Fascinated by the dark side of Paris, attracted to visit the morgue
-Describes Paris' character with detail of the people and the places.
-TTC moves between French history of 1789 but Dickens uses the years 1757-1793
-Dickens wasn't a Rebel, he had a horror of mob rule but TTC was about it.
-Came out in weekly parts as a series.
-"Unprepossessing"
-Dickens thought everything out when selling
-Crazy how people would treat his series like TV series. And how popular this was.
-Demands of weekly series, Cliffhanger endings, contrasting installment, wrote as he went along, and he was pleased with the novel.
-thought it was the best story he had ever written.