Abstract:Vanity Fair is a famous masterpiece of Thackeray, an outstanding novelist in the 19th century in Britain. The author creates a variety of characters in the novel and he reveals that the life of British bourgeoisie is corrupt and luxurious in 19th century through his poignant irony. He strongly criticizes those people who never stop seeking frame and fortune. In his world of writing, he gives a detailed description of the British aristocrat’s life and the living conditions of upstarts. The author showed these by psychological description and bitter irony which makes the reader see the selfish nature of human beings and the depravation of social mores. By virtue of this kind of poignant irony, he earns an important position in the English literature as a worthy ironist.
This paper focus on a close analysis of the wordings of the conversations in Vanity Fair to show that the ironic style in this novel have a humorous and moralizing effect.
Key words: Thackeray Vanity Fair Irony
摘要:《名利场》是19世纪英国著名小说家萨克雷的代表作。作者在小说中塑造了各种各样的人物，并以独到的讽刺文风揭露了19世纪英国上层社会的腐化与奢侈,有力地批判了那些过分追逐名利和财富的人。在作者笔下，各种形形色色的英国贵族抑或是资产阶级暴发户等人物形象跃然纸上。作者通过对人物细致的心理描写并运用尖锐的讽刺写作手法为世人展现出了尔虞我诈的英国中产阶级生活状况,当时社会中人们自私自利的本性，以及社会道德的沦丧。文中处处体现着作者运用幽默的文字来对人物性格中丑恶的一面所进行的讽刺。也正是通过这种尖刻的讽刺手法，让萨克雷成为了名副其实的讽刺作家。本论文从人物在不同情境下的对话入手，向人们展现了《名利场》独具特色的讽刺文风,揭示作者运用讽刺写作手法以达到嘲讽当时社会道德观的目的。
关键词：萨克雷 《名利场》 讽刺
Undeniably, William Makepeace Thackeray is one of the best critical realistic novelists in the age of Victorian. He uses verbal irony in his novel—Vanity Fair, especially in the conversations of different situations. The conversations that he has described are typical of verbal irony, which plays an important role in Vanity Fair. This paper has been trying to analyze the verbal irony through conversations in Vanity Fair so as to show that the novelist intends to achieve moralizing effects by using verbal irony. He criticizes the immoral social ethos in the age of Victorian. It has shown a wide variety of character’s traits. The author focuses on the reality of middle class life in the 19th century of Britain. He uses his ironic writing style to show the social corruption and the hypocrisy of human beings. The verbal irony in Vanity Fair let the readers see the ugly side of the traditional society. Therefore, this paper has been focusing on a close analysis of the wordings of conversations in Vanity Fair. By analysis of the conversations between different characters in different situations, it shows the different bad sides of character’s traits. Most parts take an example of typical conversation chosen from the novel in order to analyze the author’s purpose clearly. To sum up, this paper examines how the novelists criticizes the corruption of middle class and exposes hypocritical traits of people in the Victorian age of Britain by describing their behaviors and words through ironical conversations.
