Cirrus@Austlit

'For all the effort and artifice that writers put into affixing reality-testifying stability and solidity to their dramatis personae, it is in the nature of character to drift. Indeed, in a brutally abbreviated history of English literature, drift might be said to be the main characteristic of the story of “Character”, were character to be personified as a character. From Character’s origins as a broadly allegorical figure representing either vice or virtue in the epic poems and morality plays of the Middle Ages, via the lively realism and relative individualism conferred upon it by Chaucer, to the humanism of the Renaissance, where, in the hands of Shakespeare, it blossoms into a being of depth and complexity. Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear are not mere representations of ideas but are multi-faceted individuals with distinct personalities, their inner conflicts and moral dilemmas reflecting the human condition. From there, Character drifts into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where the rise of the novel gives it a new stage on which to perform. In the works of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, it becomes even more nuanced and detailed, mirroring the intricacies of social manners and the dynamics of an evolving society. Here, Character is no longer just a vehicle for a plot but an entity that could drive the story forward through its choices, changes, and growth. The twentieth century brings modernism, which sees Character undergoing yet another transformation. Now, Character often reflects the fragmented nature of modern existence, as seen in the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf; and, influenced by new thinking about psychology and the emergence of the practice and theory of psychoanalysis, Character is cast adrift on streams of consciousness, exploring the richly complex inner workings of the mind. With the advent of postmodernism, Character turns self-saboteur, militating against its own histories of verisimilitude and its drive towards ever-greater psychological authenticity. It plays knowingly both with the expectations of the credulous reader and with the conventions of literary writing, laying bare the workings of writerly artifice and blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. Today, the character of Character is legion, traversing a diverse landscape, embodying a multitude of experiences, identities, and realities. And it has drifted beyond the confines of the printed page to new and familiar storyworlds in other media in an expansive post-literary field (on the latter point, see Callus and Corby, v).' (Introduction)