| "David
Galef presents his research and analysis in an argument so convincing
that readers will find it extremely useful in terms of both its hermeneutic
and epistemological views. He has produced insightful responses to
specific works by Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf
and has also offered useful responses to broad questions relating
to a range of aspects of narrative theory. Specifically, Galef gives
attention to the function within selected novels of individuals other
than the principal figures, and he makes additional distinctions between
flat and minor characters through an argument made no less sophisticated
by its accessible prose style."-Michael Patrick Gillespie, Marquette
University
For every Hamlet, there is a supporting cast; for every Mrs. Dalloway,
an entire realm of subordinate portraits. Yet if literary criticism
cares at all about significant detail, emergent patterns, and the
subtleties in narrative, flat and minor characters are crucial to
an understanding of the fictional process itself.
Beginning with E. M. Forster's landmark study of flat and round
characters, this book is both a critical and writerly examination
of the species: Why are certain minor characters so salient in readers'
minds, and why are flat characters often so comic? Is a name enough
to create a character, and if so, what is the vanishing point of
characterization? The walking allegory, the narrator, the disrupter,
the doppelganger-how are they used, and to what effect? The
Supporting Cast first explores the theoretical limits of character,
from structuralist taxonomies to reader-response concerns, with
examples culled from a wide range of literature. He then applies
these concepts, in chapters of sustained analysis, to works of Conrad,
Forster, and Woolf. The work also provides comments on flat and
minor characters in other media and a full-scale character index
of Woolf's Jacob's Room. |
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