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Characters

Characters. Fascinate readers Textual creations seen as living beings “extended verbal representations of human beings” (Roberts 64, as quoted in Terence Hughes & Claire Patin )

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Characters

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  1. Characters • Fascinate readers • Textual creations seen as living beings • “extended verbal representations of human beings” (Roberts 64, as quoted in Terence Hughes & Claire Patin) • Character studies aim to determine the character’s major traits, his/her “typical modes of behaviour or response’’ (ibid. 65)

  2. Disclosure or revelation of character through: Direct telling Indirect showing • The narrator intervenes to describe and evaluate “the motives and dispositional qualities of the characters” (Abrams 23, as quoted in Terence Hughes & Claire Patin) • The reader has to infer from the information shown and elaborate her/his representation of a character after filtering the information through both extra-textual and inter-textual knowledge derived from the reader’s direct experience, and through the textual echoes any literary text brings to mind.

  3. Characters’ names and their importance: Onomastics Consider the following examples: • the Great Gatsby • Wolfsheim • David • Eve • Ebenezer Scrooge • Babbit (sound associations)

  4. Physical appearance, clothing and speech • An indirect indication of the character’s psychological make-up (ex. E. Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart) • Reveals his/her social background (ex. Pygmalion) • Speech is an indicator of a character’s ability to communicate ( grammatically correct/incorrect; characterized by limited/varied, concrete/abstract, familiar/high-flown, repetitious/symmetrical vocabulary; serious/argumentative/ironical/self-deprecatory tone)

  5. Basic requirements for genuine communication(pragmatics) • Maxim of quantity (one person must not do all the talking) • Maxim of quality (one must say what one believes to be the truth) • Maxim of relation (what one says must be relevant) • Maxim of manner (one must be clear, not ambiguous)

  6. Actions • Gestures and movements (“kinesics”) can be viewed as a substitute for words • Habitual actions can also be indicators of a character’s psychology • Does a character instigate actions, merely perform them or simply put up with them? (agent or not)

  7. Setting • When setting is more than a backcloth it can be an agent in the narrative affecting characters and thus have a causal function. Or it can reinforce analogically what has already been intimated about a character. Objects too can reveal hidden aspects of a character’s personality (ex. metonymy)

  8. Works Cited • Hughes, Terence and Claire Patin. L’analysetextuelle en anglais. Narrative Theory, Textual Practice. Paris: Armand Colin, 2005. Print

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