ABSTRACT
Dickens's perception of the grotesque is dispelled by the two novels, the Sam Weller's 'queer sights', Horatio Sparkins's 'animalculae', and the kaleidoscopic effects of 'Omnibuses' receive, in Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, their first elaborated expression within a manifestation of the marvels of a 'most fantastic city', designed to challenge the innocence, ignorance or indifference of these novels readership. Oliver Twist picks up and sharpens the analysis of bourgeois hypocrisy and pretension already witnessed in Sketckes by Boz. As a mime artist, Fagin speaks a language of gestures, of bows, shrugs and grins, obviously connected with his mode of economic activity. The great grotesque figure of Fagin is thus played into a pattern of ironies and paradoxes that befit the world of the city he inhabits. Ralph Nickleby is obviously the major predator portrayed in this novel, a cynic with a pessimist, materialist vision of the vanity of things.
