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“Read the name . . . that I have written inside”: Onomastics and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone

“Read the name . . . that I have written inside”: Onomastics and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone September 2003 69 while the second, represented by Scott, experienced an immediate and ex­ cessive popularity but suffered from the activity of imitators and plagiarists. The reference to Scott gave the latter case an effective pathos in the late 1830s; given Talfourd’s concern with benefiting living authors, though, one assumes he had Dickens in mind too. Dickens struck a blow for the second class of authors in a later chapter of Nickleby, “the legislature has a regard for pocket handkerchiefs, [but] ... leaves men’s brains, exceptwhen they are knocked out by violence, to take care of themselves” (479). “READ THE NAME . . . THAT I HAVE WRITTEN INSIDE”: ONOMASTICS AND WILKIE COLLINS’S THE MOONSTONE In many nineteenth-century British novels, it is almost a convention that proper names represent the personalities of the characters to whom they are attached. Onomastics, or the study of the origin of proper names, often reveals the endless puns and symbolic interpretations attached to character names, and nowhere is this more evident than in the novels of Charles Dickens. One could say that Dickens was the master of creating names that were indicative of a character’s personality traits, as he often used character names http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png English Language Notes Duke University Press

“Read the name . . . that I have written inside”: Onomastics and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone

Jr., James R. Simmons,
English Language Notes , Volume 41 (1) – Sep 1, 2003
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Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Regents of the University of Colorado
ISSN
0013-8282
eISSN
2573-3575
DOI
10.1215/00138282-41.1.69
Publisher site
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Abstract

September 2003 69 while the second, represented by Scott, experienced an immediate and ex­ cessive popularity but suffered from the activity of imitators and plagiarists. The reference to Scott gave the latter case an effective pathos in the late 1830s; given Talfourd’s concern with benefiting living authors, though, one assumes he had Dickens in mind too. Dickens struck a blow for the second class of authors in a later chapter of Nickleby, “the legislature has a regard for pocket handkerchiefs, [but] ... leaves men’s brains, exceptwhen they are knocked out by violence, to take care of themselves” (479). “READ THE NAME . . . THAT I HAVE WRITTEN INSIDE”: ONOMASTICS AND WILKIE COLLINS’S THE MOONSTONE In many nineteenth-century British novels, it is almost a convention that proper names represent the personalities of the characters to whom they are attached. Onomastics, or the study of the origin of proper names, often reveals the endless puns and symbolic interpretations attached to character names, and nowhere is this more evident than in the novels of Charles Dickens. One could say that Dickens was the master of creating names that were indicative of a character’s personality traits, as he often used character names

Journal

English Language Notes – Duke University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2003

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