Zwierzęce metafory jako źródło humoru w "Samotni" Karola Dickensa

Abstract

The aim of the article is to trace a few instances in which zoology-based metaphors are employed to describe particular characters from Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. It seems that the profusion of animal references in the novel serves as an ingenious interpretative strategy allowing for effortless judgement of character: for instance, good and loyal people are equalled with dogs while villains possess strikingly simian features. This peculiar “biologisation” of the characters becomes the source of humour because it reveals their human nature through the animal perspective. In effect, Dickens’s characters are more human exactly because they are animals.