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Character (arts)
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A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art (such as a novel, play, or
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film).[1] Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktr, it dates from the Restoration,[2] although it
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became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. [3][4] From this, the sense of "a part
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played by an actor" developed. [4] Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theatre or
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cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person."[5] In literature, characters guide readers
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through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes. [6] Since the end of the
18th century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an
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actor. [4] Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practised by actors or writers, has
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type. [7] Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualised. [7] The
characters in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1891) and August Strindberg's Miss Julie (1888), for
example, are representative of specific positions in the social relations of class and gender, such that
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The study of a character requires an analysis of its relations with all of the other characters in the
work. [9] The individual status of a character is defined through the network of oppositions (proairetic,
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pragmatic, linguistic, proxemic) that it forms with the other characters. [10] The relation between
characters and the action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas
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Contents [hide]
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Deutsch
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Esperanto
2 Types of characters
2.1 Round vs. flat
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3 See also
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4 Notes
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5 References
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[edit]
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In the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory, Poetics (c. 335 BCE), the Greek philosopher
Aristotle deduces that character (ethos) is one of six qualitative parts of Athenian tragedy and one of
the three objects that it represents (1450a12).[12] He understands character not to denote a fictional
Bahasa Melayu
person, but the quality of the person acting in the story and reacting to its situations (1450a5).[13] He
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defines character as "that which reveals decision, of whatever sort" (1450b8).[13] It is possible,
therefore, to have tragedies that do not contain "characters" in Aristotle's sense of the word, since
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character makes the ethical dispositions of those performing the action of the story clear.[14] Aristotle
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argues for the primacy of plot (mythos) over character (ethos).[15] He writes:
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But the most important of these is the structure of the incidents. For (i) tragedy is a
representation not of human beings but of action and life. Happiness and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_(arts)[25/02/2012 17:35:19]
unhappiness lie in action, and the end [of life] is a sort of action, not a quality;
people are of a certain sort according to their characters, but happy or the opposite
according to their actions. So [the actors] do not act in order to represent the
characters, but they include the characters for the sake of their actions" (1450a15-
Simple English
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/ Srpski
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23). [16]
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Trke
In the Poetics, Aristotle also introduced the influential tripartite division of characters in superior to the
audience, inferior, or at the same level. [17][18] In the Tractatus coislinianus (which may or may not
be by Aristotle), comedy is defined as involving three types of characters: the buffoon (bmolochus),
the ironist (eirn) and the imposter or boaster (alazn).[19] All three are central to Aristophanes' "Old
comedy." [20]
By the time the Roman playwright Plautus wrote his plays, the use of characters to define dramatic
genres was well established. [21] His Amphitryon begins with a prologue in which the speaker
Mercury claims that since the play contains kings and gods, it cannot be a comedy and must be a
tragicomedy.[22] Like much Roman comedy, it is probably translated from an earlier Greek original,
most commonly held to be Philemon's Long Night, or Rhinthon's Amphitryon, both now lost.[23]
Types of characters
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In his book Aspects of the novel, E. M. Forster defined two basic types of characters, their qualities,
functions, and importance for the development of the novel: flat characters and round
characters. [24] Flat characters are two-dimensional, in that they are relatively uncomplicated and do
not change throughout the course of a work. By contrast, round characters are complex and undergo
development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader. [citation needed]
See also
[edit]
Advertising character
Character piece
Out of character
Antagonist
Character sketch
Persona
Breaking character
Composite character
Player character
Character actor
Costumed character
Protagonist
Character animation
Declamatio
Recurring character
Character arc
Focal character
Secret character
Character blogging
Gag character
Stock character
Character comedy
Generic character
Supporting character
Character dance
Ghost character
Sympathetic character
Character flaw
Non-player character
Unseen character
Characterization
Notes
[edit]
1. ^ Baldick (2001, 37) and Childs and Fowler (2006, 23). See also "character, 10b" in Trumble and
Stevenson (2003, 381): "A person portrayed in a novel, a drama, etc; a part played by an actor".
2. ^ OED "character" sense 17.a citing, inter alia, Dryden's 1679 preface to Troilus and Cressida: "The
chief character or Hero in a Tragedy ... ought in prudence to be such a man, who has so much more in
him of Virtue than of Vice... If Creon had been the chief character in dipus..."
3. ^ Aston and Savona (1991, 34), quotation:
[...] is first used in English to denote 'a personality in a novel or a play' in 1749 (The
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, s.v.).
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Its use as 'the sum of the qualities which constitute an individual' is a mC17 development.
The modern literary and theatrical sense of 'an individual created in a fictitious work' is not
attested in OED until mC18: 'Whatever characters any... have for the jestsake
personated... are now thrown off' (1749, Fielding, Tom Jones).
p.50
References
[edit]
Aston, Elaine, and George Savona. 1991. Theatre as Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance.
London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415049326.
Baldick, Chris. 2001. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP. ISBN
019280118X.
Burke, Kenneth. 1945. A Grammar of Motives. California edition. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969. ISBN
0520015444.
Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the
Present. Expanded ed. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801481543.
Childs, Peter, and Roger Fowler. 2006. The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms. London and New York:
Routledge. ISBN 0415340179.
Elam, Keir. 2002. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. 2nd edition. New Accents Ser. London and New
York: Routledge. ISBN 0415280184. Originally published in 1980.
Goring, Rosemary, ed. 1994. Larousse Dictionary of Literary Characters. Edinburgh and New York:
Larousse. ISBN 0752300016.
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