On The Application Of Defamiliarization In Oliver Twist

In the British literature of the nineteenth Century, Dickens is undoubtedly an outstanding novelist of critical realism. Oliver Twist is one of the outstanding works of his early novels, which vividly depicts the lower people’s life in the British industrial cultural period, and reflects the harsh reality of capitalist society in early nineteenth Century. It has far-reaching significance to reveal the social, moral and political condition in that times. During the past decades, academic research on Charles Dickens and his works in China have been carried on from the aspects of overall study and analysis of the texts. When overall study is concerned, it includes the following four aspects, namely, firstly, the study on original thoughts based upon Dickens’s works; secondly, that is the study in the comparative form; thirdly, the study concerning the novel skills existing in his works; besides, the fourth perspective refers to the study on literary translation of Dickens’works. As has been noticed, as the study goes on, some standard has already come into being, that is, to make the study precise, and meanwhile, to make as many research angles as possible included in the study. Obviously, these researches are carried on in the hope of providing an explicit explanation for the special language forms on the one hand, and the motif, the analysis of the characters on the other hand; however, something that is of great importance has been overlooked, that is the writing skills concerning the value when taking the work as an art form, which is exactly the task of the literary criticism, with the aim to explain the language use existing in the texts. And "Defamiliarization", or in another form,"de-automatization", is an essential rule to express the aesthetic potential. Thus, it is full of significance to study Dickens’works based on the principals of "defamiliarization"."Defamiliarization" is the core concept of Russian formalism. In the view of formalism, the art process is the process of making things "strange", and is also the process of managing to increase the difficulty of feeling, so as to prolong the time of feeling. The basic meaning of defamiliarization lies in that all forms of poetry or literary works are not strict copies, reflection or reproduction of reality; on the contrary, they are kinds of conscious deviation, deformation, or alienation. In literary works, it is mainly manifested in three art programs, namely making the poem language difficult, creative deformation and delayed structure construction."Defamiliarization" theory is one of the most important contributions of the Russian formalism, which has important guiding significance to the innovation and development of literature and art. The formalism found that defamiliarization and automation appear dialectically, thus forming the inherent power to promote the development of literature, so that the mystery of the development of literature shifts from the traditional literary theory of the external motivation to the internal motivation of art itself, achieving a pioneering breakthrough of the traditional literary critics.As is well known to the researchers not only in the linguistic field but also in the literary field, Dickens’works are recognized for its unique language, which is said to be remarkably humorous and out of expectation, therefore, as the most outstanding representative work, and one of his masterpieces, which puts forward a vivid description of the underworld in London, Oliver Twist is chosen in this paper, and by particularly detailed reading, numerous pieces of application of the "defamiliarization" principals can be found in the novel, and this paper aims to offer an analysis of Oliver Twist based on the principals of "defamiliarization", mainly in the following four aspects, defamiliarization in characterization, defamiliarization in symbols, defamiliarization in narrative techniques, and defamiliarization in satire.This paper aims to call on the researchers’attention to the variety of the research criteria, and demonstrate the application of the "defamiliarization" principals contribute to rather an extent in displaying the aesthetic value of the literary works, so that a better understanding can be gained of how Charles Dickens seeks artistry in Oliver Twist, as he has achieved in his numerous works all over his life.