Character as Form by Aaron Kunin
What if the Renaissance had the right idea about character? Most readers today think that characters are individuals. Poets of the Renaissance understood characters as types. They thought the job of a character was to collect every example of a kind, in the same way that an entry in a dictionary collects definitions of a word. Character as Form celebrates the old meaning of character. The advantage of the old meaning is that it allows for generalization. Characters funnel whole societies of beings into shapes that are compact, elegant, and portable. This book tests the old meaning of character against modern examples from poems, novels, comics, and performances in theater and film by Shakespeare, Molière, Austen, the Marx Brothers, Raul Ruiz, Denton Welch, and Lynda Barry. The heart of the book is the character of the misanthrope, who, in Shakespeare's phrase, “banishes the world.”
Idiosyncratic, often brilliant* New York Review of Books *
The extraordinary value of Kunin’s book lies in his sensitivity to these aesthetic codes, to the way that artworks selectively augment and mute different aspects of their subjects. This is how content happens, and Kunin has an extremely good ear (and eye) for it. * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Character as Form is a bracingly original study of narrative character. * Modern Philology *
Throughout, [Kunin’s] analysis is acute and lucid. * Times Literary Supplement *
Combine[s] moments of thoughtful close reading with a vast and eclectic corpus is impressive; perhaps its most useful and intriguing contribution is the notion that ideas of ‘character’ not only permeate and shape our engagement with fictional people but also underpin their engagements with each other. * Modern Language Review *
The extraordinary value of Kunin’s book lies in his sensitivity to these aesthetic codes, to the way that artworks selectively augment and mute different aspects of their subjects. This is how content happens, and Kunin has an extremely good ear (and eye) for it. * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Character as Form is a bracingly original study of narrative character. * Modern Philology *
Throughout, [Kunin’s] analysis is acute and lucid. * Times Literary Supplement *
Combine[s] moments of thoughtful close reading with a vast and eclectic corpus is impressive; perhaps its most useful and intriguing contribution is the notion that ideas of ‘character’ not only permeate and shape our engagement with fictional people but also underpin their engagements with each other. * Modern Language Review *
Aaron Kunin is Associate Professor of English, Pomona College, USA. He is the author of two books of poetry, Folding Ruler Star: Poems (2005) and The Sore Throat and Other Poems (2010) and a novel, The Mandarin (2008).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781474222723 |
| ISBN 10 | 1474222722 |
| Title | Character as Form |
| Author | Aaron Kunin |
| Series | Beyond Criticism Ser |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Year published | 2019-03-07 |
| Number of pages | 248 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |