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Literary Character : The Human Figure in Early English Writing / Elizabeth Fowler.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2003Description: 1 online resource (280 p.) : 1 halftoneContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781501724169
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 820.9/27/0902 23
LOC classification:
  • PR275.C42 F69 2003eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Textual Debts -- Introduction: The Arguments of Person -- 1. Character and the Habituation of the Reader: The Pardoner's Thought Experiment -- 2. Persons in the Creation of Social Bonds: Agency and Civil Death in Piers Plowman -- 3. The Temporality of Social Persons: Value in "The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummynge" -- 4. Architectonic Person and the Grounds of the Polity in The Faerie Queene -- Afterword: The Obligations of Persons -- Index
Summary: Chaucer introduces the characters of the Knight and the Prioress in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Beginning with these familiar figures, Elizabeth Fowler develops a new method of analyzing literary character. She argues that words generate human figures in our reading minds by reference to paradigmatic cultural models of the person. These models—such as the pilgrim, the conqueror, the maid, the narrator—originate in a variety of cultural spheres. A concept Fowler terms the "social person" is the key to understanding both the literary details of specific characterizations and their indebtedness to history and culture.Drawing on central texts of medieval and early modern England, Fowler demonstrates that literary characters are created by assembling social persons from throughout culture. Her perspective allows her to offer strikingly original readings of works by Chaucer, Langland, Skelton, and Spenser, and to reformulate and resolve several classic interpretive problems. In so doing, she reframes accepted notions of the process and the consequences of reading.Developing insights from law, theology, economic thought, and political philosophy, Fowler's book replaces the traditional view of characters as autonomous individuals with an interpretive approach in which each character is seen as a battle of many archetypes. According to Fowler, the social person provides the template that enables authors to portray, and readers to recognize, the highly complex human figures that literature requires.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781501724169

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Textual Debts -- Introduction: The Arguments of Person -- 1. Character and the Habituation of the Reader: The Pardoner's Thought Experiment -- 2. Persons in the Creation of Social Bonds: Agency and Civil Death in Piers Plowman -- 3. The Temporality of Social Persons: Value in "The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummynge" -- 4. Architectonic Person and the Grounds of the Polity in The Faerie Queene -- Afterword: The Obligations of Persons -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Chaucer introduces the characters of the Knight and the Prioress in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Beginning with these familiar figures, Elizabeth Fowler develops a new method of analyzing literary character. She argues that words generate human figures in our reading minds by reference to paradigmatic cultural models of the person. These models—such as the pilgrim, the conqueror, the maid, the narrator—originate in a variety of cultural spheres. A concept Fowler terms the "social person" is the key to understanding both the literary details of specific characterizations and their indebtedness to history and culture.Drawing on central texts of medieval and early modern England, Fowler demonstrates that literary characters are created by assembling social persons from throughout culture. Her perspective allows her to offer strikingly original readings of works by Chaucer, Langland, Skelton, and Spenser, and to reformulate and resolve several classic interpretive problems. In so doing, she reframes accepted notions of the process and the consequences of reading.Developing insights from law, theology, economic thought, and political philosophy, Fowler's book replaces the traditional view of characters as autonomous individuals with an interpretive approach in which each character is seen as a battle of many archetypes. According to Fowler, the social person provides the template that enables authors to portray, and readers to recognize, the highly complex human figures that literature requires.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2024)