The purpose of this paper is to examine Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities as a historical novel. The historical novel aims, according to Georg Lukács, at "the portrayal of a total context of social life." The work in question, however, falls short of this ideal, which mainly comes from Dickens's evasive attitude to the social upheaval and his distrust of the revolutionary mob. The 'failure' of this work is deeply related to Dickens's sense of purpose for preventing revolutionary disarray in the Victorian England. Interestingly, A Tale of Two Cities is published between Little Dorrit and Great Expectations, two of his great masterpieces. It seems as if he willfully turned away from the creative modes of imagination that made his great works and turned instead to popular formulas including a warning to the ruling class as well as a theme of self-sacrifice. The underlying motives for these changes of interest are not easy to ascertain. A probable 'answer' would be his worries about the deepening unrest of Victorian society, which looked similar to French society just before the Revolution. However, the writer's intention to waken his contemporaries from the torpor of indifference and inhumanity nearly ends in undermining this work owing to repetitive tendency to resort to abstract generalization rather than concrete examination as well as dichotomous approach to the systemic change and the personal one. The conclusion of this work shows Dickens's emphasis on the personal change through love and self-sacrifice as a solution. But Carton's self-sacrifice gives an additional ambiguity to this work, because we can find in his death not only transcendence of but also attachment to his self or ego. The insoluble opposition between individualism and collectivism also damages the work's achievement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities as a historical novel. The historical novel aims, according to Georg Lukács, at "the portrayal of a total context of social life." The work in question, however, falls short of this ideal, which mainly comes from Dickens's evasive attitude to the social upheaval and his distrust of the revolutionary mob. The 'failure' of this work is deeply related to Dickens's sense of purpose for preventing revolutionary disarray in the Victorian England. Interestingly, A Tale of Two Cities is published between Little Dorrit and Great Expectations, two of his great masterpieces. It seems as if he willfully turned away from the creative modes of imagination that made his great works and turned instead to popular formulas including a warning to the ruling class as well as a theme of self-sacrifice. The underlying motives for these changes of interest are not easy to ascertain. A probable 'answer' would be his worries about the deepening unrest of Victorian society, which looked similar to French society just before the Revolution. However, the writer's intention to waken his contemporaries from the torpor of indifference and inhumanity nearly ends in undermining this work owing to repetitive tendency to resort to abstract generalization rather than concrete examination as well as dichotomous approach to the systemic change and the personal one. The conclusion of this work shows Dickens's emphasis on the personal change through love and self-sacrifice as a solution. But Carton's self-sacrifice gives an additional ambiguity to this work, because we can find in his death not only transcendence of but also attachment to his self or ego. The insoluble opposition between individualism and collectivism also damages the work's achievement.

historical novel, French Revolution, rebirth, personal change, individualism and collectivism