Thackeray’s Vanity Fair of Hats

Autor: Brevda, William
Zdroj: Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature; July 2024, Vol. 145 Issue: 1 p1-23, 23p
Abstrakt: ABSTRACT:In Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, William Makepeace Thackeray uses hats to illustrate his mock-heroic characters and to reinforce the novel’s theme of “Vanitas Vanitatum!” Of these hats—including cocked hats, top hats, shovel-hats, shakos, and bonnets—the narrator’s fool’s cap is the most symbolically important. Adopting a dual perspective of “Satire and Sentiment,” the narrator shows that “All is vanity.” If the vanity of life is inescapable, he implies, then the only consolation is laughter.
Databáze: Supplemental Index