Dickensian Names

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

P. suggests:
"The foreign (to English) sound and spelling of the name usually
gets preserved, but a comic English overtone or echo somehow gives away,
deflates, or otherwise comments on the bearer. Dickens did something
like this--e.g., Uriah Heep--but different--no literal meaning was
suggested."


Sometimes Dickens did it too--Lady Deadlock, for example.  Raymond Olderman
(an early Pynchonian) suggested that in GREAT EXPECTATIONS, Miss Havisham
might = "Have Is Sham" when she believes that "Have Is Am".  And Estella
is the unreachable Star.  U.S.W.


Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)