Character and Person by John Frow

by John Frow

Character and Person explores the category of fictional character, one of the most widely used and least adequately theorized concepts in literary studies, cultural studies, and everyday usage. It sets fictional character in relation to the concept of person and tries to examine how each of these terms is constructed across different cultures.

Hardcover

First published April 17, 2014

Reviews

[A L]

I took so long to get through it because it is so thorough and exhaustive. In 8 chapters he divides the literary character into separate dimensions, which don't have first principles but come out of a variety of human practices (naming, masking, legal personhood, etc.). So it's a historical materialist account, but fundamentally there is a unity of opposites: character as a linguistic entity with human presence, and person with a body that gives fantasmatic effects.