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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Among the changes in the art of fiction between the eighteenth century, when that art began to assume its modern shape, and the present, when it has arrived at what may be the ultimate degree of sophistication, one of the most basic is, doubtless, the increasing degree of particularity in the characterization. The change is perhaps mainly a phenomenon of the novel, which by its conditions is extremely favorable to minute character-studies; nevertheless, the problem of particularity affects all kinds of writing in which character is portrayed at all. The theoretical treatment of the issue in the eighteenth century broadened out beyond the limits of any one art, and a modern treatment may justifiably do the same.
1 Walter L. Myers, The Later Realism: a Study of Characterization in the British Novel (Chicago, 1927), notes in much modern fiction a “disregard of artistic, traditional, or conventional consistency or unity” in character-building (p. 4). This phenomenon he calls “incongruity,” and its first appearance he assigns roughly to the realism of late-Victorian times. See chap. iii, pp. 58–78.
2 The Idea of Locality in English Criticism of Fiction, 1750–1830 (Chicago, 1936).
3 Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (New York, 1814), p. 478 (Lecture 42).
4 Elements of Criticism (Edinburgh, 1762), ii, 149. See also Thomas Whately, Remarks on Some of the Characters of Shakespear (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1808), pp. 4–5.
5 Dissertation on the Provinces of the Drama, chap. i, Works (London, 1811), ii, 50–51. In connection with the criticism of Molière, cf. Hazlitt, lecture “On wit and humour,” Collected works, ed. Waller and Glover (London and New York, 1902–04), viii, 28–29. See Hazlitt also on the decline of “genuine comedy,” in lecture “On the comic writers of the last century,” ibid., viii, 149–154.
6 Elements of Criticism (1762), ii, 155–156. One might speculate as to what Kames would have said if he had participated in the reception of Joanna Baillie's plays on the passions—A series of plays: in which it is attempted to delineate the stronger passions of the mind, each passion being the subject of a tragedy and a comedy (London, 1798–1812). These plays were reviewed at great length in the leading journals, in a manner respectful but derogatory. On one point the critics were agreed: the author's principle of characterization was much too wooden, and the results too much simplified and lacking in life. The Monthly Review (new series, xliii [1804], 31) found the plays reminiscent of the old moralities. The Critical (third series, IV [1805], 238–239) thought that though a moral could be drawn from any series of events, it was an unnatural procedure to invent a series of events expressly to show a moral. The Edinburgh Review (xix [1811–12], 261 ff.) entered into an elaborate comparison of French and English drama, with a conclusion not to the advantage of the Baillie plays. Drama, it said, is in essence a setting forth of combinations of passion, not a single one; though it admitted that one passion might predominate. It said further that classic and French drama depend on greatness of action and sentiments; but that English drama gives more character-detail—gives, in fact, “the express image of individuals whose reality it seems impossible to question.” Shakespeare shows “inimitable truth and minuteness” in characters. Joanna Baillie's characters, on the other hand, are “generalizations”; their qualities give no impression of actual individuals and are hence not in keeping with the traditions and native genius of the English drama.
7 XXVIII (1817), 392–393. Cf. Sir Walter Scott's comment on Clara Reeve, in his Miscellaneous Prose Works (Edinburgh, 1827), iii, 398–399: “The total absence of peculiar character, (for every person introduced is rather described as one of a genus than as an original, discriminated, and individual person) may have its effect in producing the taedium which loads the story in some places. This is a general defect in the novels of the period, and it was scarce to be expected that the amiable and accomplished authoress, in her secluded situation, and with acquaintance of events and characters derived from books alone, should have rivalled those authors who gathered their knowledge of the human heart from having, like Fielding and Smollet [sic], become acquainted, by sad experience, with each turn of ‘many-coloured life’.”
Cf. also Hazlitt in his lecture “On the English novelists,” Collected Works, ed. Waller and Glover (London and New York, 1902–04), viii, 112: “There is little individual character in Gil Blas. The author is a describer of manners, not of character. He does not take the elements of human nature, and work them up into new combinations (which is the excellence of Don Quixote); nor trace the peculiar shifting shades of folly and knavery as they are to be found in real life (like Fielding): but he takes off, as it were, the general, habitual impression which circumstances make on certain conditions of life, and moulds all his characters accordingly…. He describes men as belonging to distinct classes of society; not as they are in themselves, or with the individual differences which are always to be discovered in nature.”
8 Letters, ed. Toynbee (Oxford, 1903–05), xiii, 195. Cf. ibid., xii, 339, H. Walpole to the Countess of Upper Ossory, Oct. 1, 1782, which says practically the same thing, though not so brilliantly. As to Walpole's opinion that Madame D'Arblay's art was declining, see his letter to Hannah More, Aug. 29, 1796 (Letters, xv, 421–422). The Quarterly Review, xi (1814), 124, is of the same opinion.
9 The Mirror, No. 31 (1779).
10 Craig, the Lounger, No. 49 (1786). Such a point could, moreover, be maintained even when at the same time the need of concrete particularity in the projection of character was being asserted. Note such an argument as the following from Blackwood's Magazine, iv (1818–19), 651: “The object of poetry should be to express the characteristics and tendencies of the different mental elements, together with their contrasts and collisions, under shapes, and in events, presenting a graphical aspect to the imagination. No doubt verisimilitude would be destroyed, if separate characters were to be invented, and held up as the representatives and vehicles, each of a single mental propension. This would be to exchange nature for the insipidity of allegory. The very conception of an individual implies the presence of the whole component qualities of human nature, in whatever proportions they may exist. The way to avoid both allegorical improbability and psycological [sic] dryness, would be to render individuals symbolical of different feelings, not so much by the permanent qualities attributed to them, as by the circumstances in which they were placed, and the relation in which they stood to each other for the time.”
11 Third Discourse, Everyman ed., pp. 30–33, and fourth Discourse, passim.
12 Fourth Discourse, Everyman ed., pp. 45–46.
13 Elements of Criticism (1762), iii, 306.
14 2nd ed. (London, 1794), i, 231–232.
15 One exception was Hazlitt, who, in criticizing Reynolds' Discourses, said that “the largest masses and the grandest outlines are consistent with the utmost delicacy of finishing in the parts.” See “On certain inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses,” Table-talk, Everyman ed., p. 145.
16 Blake to Thomas Butts, Nov. 22, 1802, Letters, ed. Russell (London [1906]), p. 103.
17 See, e.g., an echo of it in a discussion of the way to attain beauty in portrait-painting, in M. M'Dermot, A Critical Dissertation on the Nature and Principles of Taste (London, 1823), pp. 128–129.
18 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. Keynes (New York and London, 1927), p. 989.
19 Fifth Discourse, Everyman ed., p. 60.
20 Poetry and Prose, p. 997.
21 “On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses,” Table-talk, Everyman ed., p. 145. See Reynolds's fifth Discourse, Everyman ed., p. 67.
22 Everyman ed., p. 161.
23 Table-talk, p. 141.
24 Ibid. In a passage which Hazlitt does not quote, in the tenth Discourse (Everyman ed., p. 160), Reynolds says that sculpture may possess, among other things, “appropriated expression”—i.e., may represent the particular character of the subject!
25 See “Lecture on Hogarth and others,” Collected Works, viii, 146–149.
26 Note Hazlitt's emphasis on “character” in the following from “Mr. West's picture of Christ rejected,” New Writings: second series, ed. Howe (London, 1927), p. 61: “On the one hand, there is Mr. Westall's Gallery, the elegant antithesis to the style of Hogarth, where, instead of that originality of character which excludes a nice attention to general forms, we have all that beauty of form which excludes the possibility of character; the refined essence and volatilized spirit of art, without any of the caput mortuum of nature; and where, instead of her endless variety, peculiarities and defects, we constantly meet with the same classical purity and undeviating simplicity of idea—one sweet smile, one heightened bloom diffused over all. On the other hand, in turning to Mr. West's Great Picture, we are struck with all that grandeur of subject, magnitude of proportion, regularity of design—and, in short, with everything, which is not to be found in Hogarth—except character and expression!”
In a general way, this insistence on the claims of character and expression is seen also in Archibald Alison's treatment of the evolution of the arts of painting and sculpture (Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, with an Essay on Beauty by Jeffrey [reprint of 5th ed., London, 1879], p. 213): “The imitation of the beautiful, from the imitation of mere form, was itself a great step in the art, but was of still greater consequence in leading to another. Beautiful forms were more beautiful in one attitude than in another, under the influence of some passions or affections, than under the influence of others. To imitate such objects, therefore, it was necessary to study, not only the general beauty of form, but such attitudes and expressions, as were the signs of such passions or affections …. [The painter] would endeavour by degrees … to unite the beauty of form with the beauty of expression; and would thus gradually ascend to the conception of ideal beauty.” Note that this formula for ideal beauty differs from Reynolds', which is concerned with form only. See his third Discourse, Everyman ed., pp. 32-33. Elsewhere Alison emphasizes the claim of character thus (Essays, p. 220): “In all those arts … that have for their object the production of beautiful forms, it may be considered as a first and fundamental principle, that the expression of design should be subject to the expression of character…. To a common spectator, the great test of excellence in beautiful forms is character or expression….” Cf. Reynolds as quoted above, p. 60.
Jeffrey's criticism of Reynolds (see Essay on Beauty, with Alison, Essays on taste, reprint of 5th ed., p. 22), though it did not involve a consideration of character and expresson, still rejected the doctrine of middle forms entirely. Jeffrey suggested that Reynolds might have derived that doctrine from the contemplation of human forms. In these, he granted, irregularities, especially if marked, were disagreeable; but he argued back that in respect to other artistic materials this was far from true—inanimate natural objects and landscapes, for instance, being prized more for some rare and surprizing appearance than for symmetry or for commonness.
27 Professor Lovejoy has shown that the change of point of view which Friedrich Schlegel underwent about the middle of the 1790's was symptomatic of an important change in German esthetics and literature. Lovejoy quotes Schlegel as saying that the “interessante,” or, as he called it later, “romantische Poesie,” was concerned not with the universal or typical (i.e., beauty), but with “ein subjectives Interesse an einer bestimmten Art von Leben, an einem individuellen Stoff,” also an interest in unusual individuals. Schlegel also treated “das Characterische” as a special feature of “modern” art as against ancient art. See “On the meaning of ‘Romantic’ in early German Romanticism,” Part i, MLN, xxxi (1916), 385–396; Part ii, ibid., xxxii (1917), 65–77; also “Schiller and the genesis of Romanticism,” ibid., xxxv (1920), 1–10, 136–146.
28 See John H. Muirhead, Coleridge as Philosopher (London and New York, 1930), pp. 196–197.
29 Biographia Liter aria, ed. Shawcross (Oxford, 1907), ii, 33–34.
30 “Notes on the Tempest,” Works (New York, 1853), iv, 78–79. See also T. M. Raysor, ed., Coleridge's Shakespearean Criticism (London, 1930), ii, 9, 43.
31 “Satyrane's letters,” No. 2, Biographia Literaria, ed. Shawcross, ii, 159.
32 Ibid. Note another analogy in Raysor, Coleridge's Shak. Crit., ii, 33–34.
33 Works (1853), iv, 333.
34 For an extended study of Coleridge's philosophy, see Muirhead, Coleridge as Philosopher.
35 Lecture-notes, in Raysor, i, 224.
36 Muirhead, p. 98.
37 Muirhead, pp. 128–129, says of Coleridge's notion of individuation: “We are apt to think of individuation as a process of separation and detachment, but Coleridge insists throughout on the opposite tendency to interconnection as an inseparable element in it, just as centripetal power is necessarily presupposed in centrifugal.”
38 See Muirhead, p. 204.
39 “On poesy or art,” Works (18S3), iv, 332.
40 See Raysor, i, 232.
41 Biographia Literaria, ed. Shawcross, i, 202.
42 “Cervantes,” Works (1853), iv, 268.
43 The Friend, reprinted in Works (1853), ii, 416.
44 Ibid.
45 “Cervantes,” Works (1853), iv, 268. This method of reasoning on the part of Coleridge is seen also in these observations on Sterne:
“The excellencies of Sterne consist—
“1. In bringing forward into distinct consciousness those minutiae of thought and feeling which appear trifles, yet have an importance for the moment, and which almost every man feels in one way or another. Thus is produced the novelty of an individual peculiarity, together with the interest of something that belongs to our common nature….
“2. In the traits of human nature, which so easily assume a particular cast and color from individual character … [a scene from Tristram Shandy is given as illustration.]
“Observe … how individual character may be given by the mere delicacy of presentation and elevation in degree of a common good quality, humanity, which in itself would not be characteristic at all.”—“The nature and constituents of humor,” etc., Works (1853), iv, 282.
46 Coleridge seems to say otherwise in one place (see above, n. 29); but when he says that “the persons of poetry must be clothed with generic attributes,” he has in mind, I think, only such signs as enable the reader to perceive some ordinary element of humanity in the characters. But to identify a character as a human being is not to avoid giving him a manner of expressing his common humanity which is individual and even odd. He may be represented as a farmer, a servant, a melancholy man, a poet; the classification serves to link the character with those general ideas through which the reader most readily finds his way around in human nature. It serves further to give the actions and feelings of the character a universal applicability. This universality once established, the peculiarities of the individual are clearly seen as showing the variety of forms which nature evolves from itself.
47 Edinburgh Review, xlii (1825), 415.
48 In the early nineteenth century German fiction seems to have had the reputation of moving in the sphere of what one writer dubbed the “ultra romance” (see The Literary Examiner [London, 1823], p. 123). When it began to be popular in England, about 1790, and translations began to pour from the English press (see V. Stockley, German Literature as Known in England, 1750–1830 [London, 1929], pp. 215 ff.), the character most often noted in it was extravagance and fantasy. Both praise and censure were usually for these qualities in respect to characterization, as to everything else. See Stockley, pp. 215–219, 228, 235, 240, etc.
