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"Literary characters"
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Shakespeare's Mad Men
This book is about a mad king and a mad duke. With original and iconoclastic readings, Richard van Oort pioneers the reading of Shakespeare as an ethical thinker of the \"originary scene,\" the scene in which humans became conscious of themselves as symbol-using moral and narrative beings. Taking King Lear and Measure for Measure as case studies, van Oort shows how the minimal concept of an anthropological scene of origin—the \"originary hypothesis\"—provides the basis for a new understanding of every aspect of the plays, from the psychology of the characters to the ethical and dialogical conflicts upon which the drama is based. The result is a gripping commentary on the plays. Why does Lear abdicate and go mad? Why does Edgar torture his father with non-recognition? Why does Lucio accuse the Duke in Measure for Measure of madness and lechery, and why does Isabella remain silent at the end? In approaching these and other questions from the perspective of the originary hypothesis, van Oort helps us to see the ethical predicament of the plays, and, in the process, makes Shakespeare new again.
eBook
Shakespeare and cognition : thinking fast and slow through character
\"Shakespeare and Cognition challenges orthodox approaches to Shakespeare by using recent psychological findings about human decision-making to analyse the unique characters that populate his plays. It aims to find a way to reconnect readers and watchers of Shakespeare's plays to the fundamental questions that first animated them. Why does Othello succumb so easily to Iago's manipulations? Why does Anne allow herself to be wooed by Richard III, the man who killed her husband and father? Why does Macbeth go from being a seemingly reasonable man to a cold-blooded killer? Why does Hamlet take so long to kill Claudius? This book aims to answer these questions from a fresh perspective\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Comic Book Women
The history of comics has centered almost exclusively on men.
Comics historians largely describe the medium as one built by men
telling tales about male protagonists, neglecting the many ways in
which women fought for legitimacy on the page and in publishers'
studios. Despite this male-dominated focus, women played vital
roles in the early history of comics. The story of how comic books
were born and how they evolved changes dramatically when women like
June Tarpé Mills and Lily Renée are placed at the center rather
than at the margins of this history, and when characters such as
the Black Cat, Patsy Walker, and Señorita Rio are analyzed.
Comic Book Women offers a feminist history of the
golden age of comics, revising our understanding of how numerous
genres emerged and upending narratives of how male auteurs built
their careers. Considering issues of race, gender, and sexuality,
the authors examine crime, horror, jungle, romance, science
fiction, superhero, and Western comics to unpack the cultural and
industrial consequences of how women were represented across a wide
range of titles by publishers like DC, Timely, Fiction House, and
others. This revisionist history reclaims the forgotten work done
by women in the comics industry and reinserts female creators and
characters into the canon of comics history.
eBook
Falstaff : give me life
\"From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time as well as a beloved professor who has taught the Bard for over half a century, an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Falstaff--Shakespeare's greatest enduring and complex comedic character. Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays: Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Henry V. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads, him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him--some innocent, some cruel. Falstaff can be lewd, funny, careless of others, a bad creditor, an unreliable friend, and in the end, devastatingly reckless in his presumption of loyalty from the new King. Award-winning author and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal. Just as we encounter one type of Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are young adults and another when we are middle-aged, Bloom writes about his own shifting understanding of Falstaff over the course of his lifetime. Ultimately we come away with a deeper appreciation of this profoundly complex character, and the book as a whole becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity. Bloom is mesmerizing in the classroom, wrestling with the often tragic choices Shakespeare's characters make. He delivers that kind of exhilarating intimacy and clarity in Falstaff, inviting us to look at a character as a flawed human who might live in our world. The result is deeply intimate and utterly compelling.\" -- Publisher's description
BOOK
The Prince’s Two Bodies: The Machiavellian Hero as a Literary Character Between History and Invention
This article discusses how in De principatibus Machiavelli defines the status of the treatise main character (the Prince) through the intersection of three levels: (a) history (as a character born from the symbolic fusion of traits and characteristics of historical personalities who actually existed); (b) politics (as a character who is the sign of an abstract political function); and (c) literary invention (as a fictional character constructed according to the rhetorical and logical strategies of literary invention). This case study shows how rhetoric, historiography, oratory, and political analysis are mixed together in a coherent organism, thanks to the creation of a character (the Prince) who constantly oscillates between historical–political reality and literary fiction. The analysis, both theoretical and historical, of the status of the protagonist of De principatibus is accompanied by the study of the critical readings of Francesco De Sanctis, Antonio Gramsci, and Luigi Russo, whose reception is strongly conditioned by the ambiguous nature of the character of the Prince, both in terms of critical categories and argumentative strategies.
Journal Article
How to be a heroine, or, What I've learned from reading too much
\"A young writer explores what some of the greatest women in literature have meant to her--and how these timeless characters still serve as a guide for the way we lead our lives\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Rejection of Victimhood in Literature
This book examines how selected works of fiction advocate for just memories and promote identities that accept ethical agency and that exercise power and control over their own lives and destinies, no matter how limited such control may be.
eBook
The Cambridge companion to Frankenstein
\"The Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein consists of sixteen original essays on Mary Shelley's novel by leading scholars, providing an invaluable introduction to Frankenstein and its various critical contexts. Theoretically informed but accessibly written, this volume relates Frankenstein to various social, literary, scientific and historical contexts, and outlines how critical theories such as ecocriticism, posthumanism, and queer theory generate new and important discussion in illuminating ways. The volume also explores the cultural afterlife of the novel including its adaptations in various media such as drama, film, television, graphic novels, and literature aimed at children and young adults. Written by an international team of leading experts, the essays provide new insights into the novel and the various critical approaches which can be applied to it. The volume is an essential guide to students and academics who are interested in Frankenstein and who wish to know more about its complex literary history\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
FiCT-O: Modelling Fictional Characters in Detective Fiction from the 19th to the 20th Century
This paper proposes a formal descriptive model for understanding the evolution of characters in detective fiction from the 19th to the 20th century, using methodologies and technologies from the Semantic Web. The integration of Digital Humanities within the theory of comparative literature opens new paths of study that allow for a digital approach to the understanding of intertextuality through close reading techniques and ontological modelling. In this research area, the variety of possible textual relationships, the levels of analysis required to classify these connections, and the inherently referential nature of certain literary genres demand a structured taxonomy. This taxonomy should account for stylistic elements, narrative structures, and cultural recursiveness that are unique to literary texts. The detective figure, central to modern literature, provides an ideal lens for examining narrative intertextuality across the 19th and 20th centuries. The analysis concentrates on character traits and narrative functions, addressing various methods of rewriting within the evolving cultural and creative context of authorship. Through a comparative examination of a representative sample of detective fiction from the period under scrutiny, the research identifies mechanisms of (meta)narrative recurrence, transformation, and reworking within the canon. The outcome is a formal model for describing narrative structures and techniques, with a specific focus on character development, aimed at uncovering patterns of continuity and variation in diegetic content over time and across different works, adaptable to analogous cases of traditional reworking and narrative fluidity.
Journal Article