Minor Characters Have Their Day

Minor Characters Have Their Day PDF Author: Jeremy Rosen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542402
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
How do genres develop? In what ways do they reflect changing political and cultural trends? What do they tell us about the motivations of publishers and readers? Combining close readings and formal analysis with a sociology of literary institutions and markets, Minor Characters Have Their Day offers a compelling new approach to genre study and contemporary fiction. Focusing on the booming genre of books that transform minor characters from canonical literary texts into the protagonists of new works, Jeremy Rosen makes broader claims about the state of contemporary fiction, the strategies of the publishing industry over recent decades, and the function of literary characters. Rosen traces the recent surge in "minor-character elaboration" to the late 1960s and works such as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. These early examples often recover the voices of marginalized individuals and groups. As the genre has exploded between the 1980s and the present, with novels about Ahab's wife, Huck Finn's father, and Mr. Dalloway, it has begun to embody the neoliberal commitments of subjective experience, individual expression, and agency. Eventually, large-scale publishers capitalized on the genre as a way to appeal to educated audiences aware of the prestige of the classics and to draw in identity-based niche markets. Rosen's conclusion ties the understudied evolution of minor-character elaboration to the theory of literary character.

Minor Characters Have Their Day

Minor Characters Have Their Day PDF Author: Jeremy Rosen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542402
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Get Book Here

Book Description
How do genres develop? In what ways do they reflect changing political and cultural trends? What do they tell us about the motivations of publishers and readers? Combining close readings and formal analysis with a sociology of literary institutions and markets, Minor Characters Have Their Day offers a compelling new approach to genre study and contemporary fiction. Focusing on the booming genre of books that transform minor characters from canonical literary texts into the protagonists of new works, Jeremy Rosen makes broader claims about the state of contemporary fiction, the strategies of the publishing industry over recent decades, and the function of literary characters. Rosen traces the recent surge in "minor-character elaboration" to the late 1960s and works such as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. These early examples often recover the voices of marginalized individuals and groups. As the genre has exploded between the 1980s and the present, with novels about Ahab's wife, Huck Finn's father, and Mr. Dalloway, it has begun to embody the neoliberal commitments of subjective experience, individual expression, and agency. Eventually, large-scale publishers capitalized on the genre as a way to appeal to educated audiences aware of the prestige of the classics and to draw in identity-based niche markets. Rosen's conclusion ties the understudied evolution of minor-character elaboration to the theory of literary character.

Characters in Fictional Worlds

Characters in Fictional Worlds PDF Author: Jens Eder
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110232421
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 607

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Book Description
Although fictional characters have long dominated the reception of literature, films, television programs, comics, and other media products, only recently have they begun to attract their due attention in literary and media theory. The book systematically surveys today ́s diverse and at times conflicting theoretical perspectives on fictional character, spanning research on topics such as the differences between fictional characters and real persons, the ontological status of characters, the strategies of their representation and characterization, the psychology of their reception, as well as their specific forms and constellations in - and across - different media, from the book to the internet.

Flat Protagonists

Flat Protagonists PDF Author: Marta Figlerowicz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190650362
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
We've all encountered protagonists who, over the course of a novel, turn out to be more complicated than we thought at first. But what does one do with a major character who simplifies as a novel progresses, to the point where even this novel's other characters begin to disregard him? Flat Protagonists shows that writers have undertaken such formal experiments-which give rise to its titular “flat protagonists”-since the novel's incipience. It finds such characters in British and French novels ranging from the late-seventeenth to the early-twentieth century by Aphra Behn, Isabelle de Charrière, Françoise de Graffigny, Thomas Hardy, and Marcel Proust. Marta Figlerowicz argues that these uncommon flat protagonists challenge our larger views about the novel as a genre. Upending a longstanding tradition of valuing characters for their complexity, Figlerowicz proposes that novels, and their characters, should be appreciated for highlighting the limits to how much attention any particular person's self-expression tends to garner, and how much insight anyone has to offer her community. As invitations to consider how we might come across to others, rather than merely how others come across to us, flat protagonists both subvert and complement the more conventional approach to novels as, at their best, sites of instruction in interpersonal empathy.

Novel Characters

Novel Characters PDF Author: Maria DiBattista
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444351559
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Novel Characters offers a fascinating and in-depth history of the novelistic character from the “birth of the novel” in Don Quixote, through the great canonical works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the most influential international novels of the present day An original study which offers a unique approach to thinking about and discussing character Makes extensive reference to both traditional and more recent and specialized academic studies of the novel Provides a critical vocabulary for understanding how the novelistic conception of character has changed over time. Examines a broad range of novels, cultures, and periods Promotes discussion of how different cultures and times think about human identity, and how the concept of what a character is has changed over time

Character

Character PDF Author: Amanda Anderson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022665866X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Over the last few decades, character-based criticism has been seen as either naive or obsolete. But now questions of character are attracting renewed interest. Making the case for a broad-based revision of our understanding of character, Character rethinks these questions from the ground up. Is it really necessary to remind literary critics that characters are made up of words? Must we forbid identification with characters? Does character-discussion force critics to embrace humanism and outmoded theories of the subject? Across three chapters, leading scholars Amanda Anderson, Rita Felski, and Toril Moi reimagine and renew literary studies by engaging in a conversation about character. Moi returns to the fundamental theoretical assumptions that convinced literary scholars to stop doing character-criticism, and shows that they cannot hold. Felski turns to the question of identification and draws out its diverse strands, as well as its persistence in academic criticism. Anderson shows that character-criticism illuminates both the moral life of characters, and our understanding of literary form. In offering new perspectives on the question of fictional character, this thought-provoking book makes an important intervention in literary studies.

The 100 Greatest Literary Characters

The 100 Greatest Literary Characters PDF Author: James Plath
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538103761
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book identifies 100 of the most intriguing characters from some of the most well-known novels published over several centuries, from Hester Prynne and Harry Potter to Jay Gatsby and T.S. Garp. The book profiles these memorable characters and details their significance both at the time they were created and today.

How to Write a Novel

How to Write a Novel PDF Author: Nathan Bransford
Publisher: Nathan Bransford
ISBN: 173414940X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Author and former literary agent Nathan Bransford shares his secrets for creating killer plots, fleshing out your first ideas, crafting compelling characters, and staying sane in the process. Read the guide that New York Times bestselling author Ransom Riggs called "The best how-to-write-a-novel book I've read."

The Fictional 100

The Fictional 100 PDF Author: Lucy Pollard-Gott
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1440154392
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
Some of the most influential and interesting people in the world are fictional. Sherlock Holmes, Huck Finn, Pinocchio, Anna Karenina, Genji, and Superman, to name a few, may not have walked the Earth (or flown, in Superman's case), but they certainly stride through our lives. They influence us personally: as childhood friends, catalysts to our dreams, or even fantasy lovers. Peruvian author and presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, for one, confessed to a lifelong passion for Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Characters can change the world. Witness the impact of Solzhenitsyn's Ivan Denisovich, in exposing the conditions of the Soviet Gulag, or Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom, in arousing anti-slavery feeling in America. Words such as quixotic, oedipal, and herculean show how fictional characters permeate our language. This list of the Fictional 100 ranks the most influential fictional persons in world literature and legend, from all time periods and from all over the world, ranging from Shakespeare's Hamlet [1] to Toni Morrison's Beloved [100]. By tracing characters' varied incarnations in literature, art, music, and film, we gain a sense of their shape-shifting potential in the culture at large. Although not of flesh and blood, fictional characters have a life and history of their own. Meet these diverse and fascinating people. From the brash Hercules to the troubled Holden Caulfield, from the menacing plots of Medea to the misguided schemes of Don Quixote, The Fictional 100 runs the gamut of heroes and villains, young and old, saints and sinners. Ponder them, fall in love with them, learn from their stories the varieties of human experience--let them live in you.

Elements of Fiction

Elements of Fiction PDF Author: Walter Mosley
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 080214764X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
The renowned novelist and author of This Year You Write a Novel shares a “compact but insight-rich” guide to fiction writing (Publishers Weekly). In his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools to write a novel in one year. In this complementary follow up, Mosley guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. For writers who want to approach the genius of Melville, Dickens, or Twain, The Elements of Fiction is a must-read. Mosley demonstrates how to master fiction’s most essential elements: character and char-acter development, plot and story, voice and narrative, context and description, and more. The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from the blank page to the first draft to rewriting, and rewriting again. Throughout, The Elements of Fiction is enriched by brilliant demonstrative examples that Mosley himself has written here for the first time.

Dictionary of British Literary Characters

Dictionary of British Literary Characters PDF Author: John R. Greenfield
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816021789
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
Identifies hundreds of characters from notable works of British fiction, from The Pilgrim's Progress to contemporary novels