A Tale of Two Cities Audiobook librivox

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a historical novel by Charles Dickens; it is moreover a moral novel strongly concerned with themes of guilt, shame, redemption and patriotism.

The plot centers on the years leading up to French Revolution and culminates in the Jacobin Reign of Terror. It tells the story of two men, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, who look very alike but are entirely different in character.(Summary from Wikipedia)

Genre(s): Historical Fiction

Language: English

A Tale of Two Cities (version 2)

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it is among the most famous works of fiction.

The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows the lives of several protagonists through these events. The most notable are Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. Darnay is a French once-aristocrat who falls victim to the indiscriminate wrath of the revolution despite his virtuous nature, and Carton is a dissipated British barrister who endeavours to redeem his ill-spent life out of his unrequited love for Darnay's wife, Lucie Manette. (Introduction by Wikipedia)

Genre(s): General Fiction, Historical Fiction

Language: English

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A Tale of Two Cities (Version 5)

Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities is a novel that views the eighteenth century French Revolution through the lens of nineteenth century Victorian Romanticism. Dickens tells the story of a wide range of characters in London and Paris whose lives intersect in the turbulence of the revolution. Unusual among his novels, A Tale of Two Cities relies heavily on plot rather than characterization. The moralism so typical of Dickens is much in evidence, however, as the author stages his story in the most violent period of the revolution, the Reign of Terror (1792-1794). It is very much a tale of good versus evil, with Dickens essentially realizing in fiction the historian Thomas Carlyle’s now-discredited interpretation of the French Revolution as a struggle between oppressed poor and monstrous aristocrats. (The French Middle-Class, which began and ended the Revolution in reality, are nowhere to be found in the novel) Dickens situates the tensions of the period in the characters of the story: Charles Darnay, scion of the aristocracy but determined to atone for his family’s sins; Sydney Carton, a dissolute English barrister drawn to a plan of redemptive self-sacrifice to give his life to save Darnay, the husband of the woman Carton loves; Lucy Manette, the pure personification of saintly womanhood and the woman both men love; and a duo of comedic characters of a kind more familiar to Dickens’s readers, the shrill Miss Pross and the hapless “resurrectionist,” Jerry Cruncher.

The novel threads a continuous dualism through the story, a dualism both in plot and characterization. Opposite Lucy’s sacredness as a human symbol of love, Dickens gives us Madame Defarge, a human dynamo hell-bent on murderous revenge against Darnay’s family and all its descendants. The Revolution is portrayed as an understandable reaction to the aristocrats’ cruelty toward the poor, but the latter’s response--the guillotine and the trumbrils that supply its steady “wine”--simply represent the poor repeating the same mistakes as their oppressors. The “two cities.” too, are opposites. Dickens’s London is a place where change is often impossibly stymied by stuffiness, but on which the world can rely for the preservation of law and freedom. Paris is a city of hate and lawless vengeance, high in risk but also pregnant with the possibility of regeneration. It is in Paris that Darnay and Carton, so like each other in appearance, so different in their life paths, experience completely different fates, but fates that allow them equally to realize their common dream for a life well lived.

Dickens, who liked to act in this later stage of his career, very much portrays his scenes as set-pieces heavy on dialogue, almost like a play. This poses a challenge to the reader. The novel’s romanticism and symbolism virtually invites exaggeration in the reading of the dialogue, and provides forgiveness for any failures to render these readings “realistic.” Yet there is a complete seriousness to the messages Dickens is trying to convey that must not be undermined by excessive mannerism. For generations to come, audiences will surely continue to love this novel and its reflection on life, and on what makes life worth living. (summary by rreiman)

Genre(s): Historical Fiction

Language: English

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