Character (arts)

For other uses, see Character.
Four commedia dell'arte characters, whose costumes and demeanor indicate the stock character roles that they portray in this genre

In fiction, a character or personage,[1] is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game).[2][3][4] The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, in which case the distinction of a "fictional" versus "real" character may be made.[3] Derived from the Ancient Greek word χαρακτήρ, the English word dates from the Restoration,[5] although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones by Henry Fielding in 1749.[6][7] From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor" developed.[7] (Before this development, the term dramatis personae, naturalized in English from Latin and meaning "masks of the drama", encapsulated the notion of characters from the literal aspect of masks.) Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theater or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person".[8] In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes.[9] Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an actor.[7] Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practiced by actors or writers, has been called characterization.[7]

A character who stands as a representative of a particular class or group of people is known as a type.[10] Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualized.[10] 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 the conflicts between the characters reveal ideological conflicts.[11]

The study of a character requires an analysis of its relations with all of the other characters in the work.[12] The individual status of a character is defined through the network of oppositions (proairetic, pragmatic, linguistic, proxemic) that it forms with the other characters.[13] The relation between characters and the action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas about human individuality, self-determination, and the social order.[14]

  1. ^ "personage — definition, examples, related words and more at Wordnik". Wordnik.com. Retrieved 2024-07-04.
  2. ^ Matthew Freeman (2016). Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-Century Transmedia Story Worlds. Routledge. pp. 31–34. ISBN 978-1315439501. Retrieved January 19, 2017.
  3. ^ a b Maria DiBattista (2011). Novel Characters: A Genealogy. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 14–20. ISBN 978-1444351552. Retrieved January 19, 2017.
  4. ^ 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".
  5. ^ 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 Œdipus..."
  6. ^ 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.).
  7. ^ a b c d Harrison (1998, 51-2) quotation:

    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).
  8. ^ Pavis (1998, 47).
  9. ^ Roser, Nancy; Miriam Martinez; Charles Fuhrken; Kathleen McDonnold (2007). "Characters as Guides to Meaning". The Reading Teacher. 60 (6): 548–559. doi:10.1598/RT.60.6.5.
  10. ^ a b Baldick (2001, 265).
  11. ^ Aston and Savona (1991, 35).
  12. ^ Aston and Savona (1991, 41).
  13. ^ Elam (2002, 133).
  14. ^ Childs and Fowler (2006, 23).