Character as Form

by Aaron Kunin

What if the Renaissance had the right idea about character? Most readers today think that characters are individuals. Poets of the Renaissance understood characters as types. They thought the job of a character was to collect every example of a kind, in the same way that an entry in a dictionary collects definitions of a word.
Character as Form celebrates the old meaning of character. The advantage of the old meaning is that it allows for generalization. Characters funnel whole societies of beings into shapes that are compact, elegant, and portable.
This book tests the old meaning of character against modern examples from poems, novels, comics, and performances in theater and film by Shakespeare, Molière, Austen, the Marx Brothers, Raul Ruiz, Denton Welch, and Lynda Barry. The heart of the book is the character of the misanthrope, who, in Shakespeare's phrase, “banishes the world.”

256 pages, Hardcover

Published March 7, 2019

Reviews

[linz · Rating 4 out of 5]

first discovered kunin through emily's class on literary history in sophomore spring through the scorchingly brilliant and objectively kooky "Shakespeare's Preservation Fantasy," and i've been meaning to read some more of his work ever since but only got around to it now

i wish i'd picked this monograph up a little earlier—think a lot of the themes on structure and form and character and narrative and desire could've been inspiring for my thesis. i definitely wonder how the Middle English Romance would sit in this paradigm—honestly a little surprised that wasn't the direction kunin moved in, all things considered

might have to revisit this one in the future

[Conor]

Bizarre, but somewhat excellent. Kunin's Love Three is still probably my favourite book I've read this year, and Angela Leighton's 'On Form,' one of my favourite ever books, was likely in my head due to the similar titles. However, this book wants to be something completely different. It's not a defence of literary stereotype, but he does very little to deflect that charge, instead focusing intently on his weird little arguments that somehow, somehow, wrap around into a coherent whole. I would have structured it differently. It was really the third chapter where the arguments felt like they were locking in, with Kunin's alternate history of the novel as one of the failure of particularisation finally explaining why the old notion of character is still relevant. The first chapter felt like the next step, exploring the (often elegant) economy of character, with a deft connection to Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress.' And then the second and final chapters felt like the limits of the argument, a half-melancholy appeal to the consolatory comforts of relinquishing one's individuality. This too was a Marvellian move, a kind of lush death-drive that is dangerously sensuous, not entirely self-indulgent though in how it corrects much of our contemporary clinging to some notion of miniaturised personal expression. My instinct is quickly to frame this point in left-wing political terms, but Kunin doesn't make that move here in quite the way he does in Love Three, so I'm wary of shunting that kind of moral onto the book in case it fractures the core literary arguments. While I can't say I understood all of this, I am happy to say it rewarded my patience and perseverance with some fascinating insights, challenging perspectives, and good further reading recommendations.

PS: Kunin discusses novel Caleb Williams at length, but not one word was written on the famed USC Trojans Quarterback. For that appalling omission, this book has fallen significantly in my regard.