Turning words on the page into "real" people Herbert Grabes 1.

The Power of Illusion In the wake of an ever-increasing interest in the characters of Shakespeare's plays since the end of the eighteenth century, John Wilson in 1829 made the following statement: "Shakespeare's characters have long ceased to be poetical creations, and are now as absolute flesh and blood as any other subject of his Majesty's dominions" (963). The striking neglect of the fact that characters tend to emerge from the page when we read novels, plays, or poems--a neglect that was strengthened by the structuralist fixation on the text--has slowly been overcome in recent times by an increased interest in the process of reading. The phenomenon is, after all, widespread enough. Not only do such figures take on a life of their own in that they repeatedly become the protagonists of new works (for example in the Hamlet novels of Georg Britting and Alfred Doblin or in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead). More important is the fact that figures like Hamlet or Lady Macbeth, Tom Jones or Huck Finn, Stephen Dedalus or Mrs. Dalloway, Blanche Dubois or Willy Loman, Holden Caulfield or Lolita tend to exist autonomously in the memory of those readers or audiences who have "made their acquaintance" in the respective plays and novels. In order to come closer to an adequate analysis of this process of figuring-forth, it will in the first place be necessary to differentiate between on the one hand "literary character" as the totality of the signs in the text that provide clues for the readers' acts of construction and, on the other hand, the dramatised "figures beyond the text" (Cohan) that readers picture on the stage of their imagination during the process of reading. Since the publication of the original German version of this essay, critics like Steven Cohan, Uri Margolin, Laszlo Halasz, Richard J. Gerri, and David W. Allbritton as well as Thomas Koch and Ralf Schneider have helped to overcome the methodological reduction of literary characters to mere "actants" in structuralist narratology and have started to pay tribute to the creative activity of the reader. What we chiefly find in these more recent studies is an interpretation of literary characters as "mental models" in the sense of cognitive psychology? This may solve some analytical problems but creates a new one--it leaves unexplained why in our imagination we do not encounter mere "mental models" but figures often as much alive as those we meet in everyday life. The experience of this encounter with literary characters will be felt most strongly by the literary scholar who still has the ability to read or to watch a film or theater performance without immediately analyzing it. The strength of the illusion becomes apparent in the fact that one almost inevitably gets involved in the fate of the protagonists despite one's theoretical insight into the artificiality or constructedness of literary characters. Admittedly, for the purpose of analysis one must not remain caught up in this illusion; however, neither should one dismiss it. On the contrary, one has to take this effect properly into account and attempt to explain it as the "primary" phenomenon.

2. The Conditions of Figuring-Forth We gain knowledge of literary characters through literary works--this seems fairly clear. On the other hand, such characters really become figured-forth only in the imagination of the reader or viewer. Since the imagining takes place during the so-called "reception" of a work, the elements or factors necessary for the figuration of a literary character are the text, the imagination of the recipient, and the interaction of the two in the process of reading or listening. The object of investigation here is precisely that interaction, the process of transformation that turns some signs or features of a literary text into characters. How is it possible that powerful figures emerge from pages filled with words and sentences as soon as we begin the process of reading? We know that for the reader written texts--here, literary texts--are on the level of perception only material constructs of a particular type which allow themselves to be understood by interpreting a certain linguistic structure as meaningful within a given system of signs. To say that there are literary characters "in" a text can mean no more than that there are signs in it signifying human beings, signs that can motivate the imagining of figures existing beyond the text. This issue has not been adequately discussed, at least not with respect to the phenomenon of characters. The conditions under which the notion of a literary character is created are in the first place quite modest, hence not very difficult to ascertain. A name or even a personal pronoun is enough to evoke such a notion, and we tend to assume right away a great deal more than this scanty information justifies. The precondition for the subsequent subsumption of various bits of information under the unit of "character" is less easily explained. If a name or a noun that functions like a name ("the king" in a story in which there is only one king) is repeated, the "signal of identity" is quite clear. This procedure is highly formalized in, and thoroughly symptomatic of, play scripts, in which most segments of the text are explicitly assigned to a name. This is true even of plays such as Pinter's, in which more often than not the demarcated contributions of the individual characters seem to be interchangeable. Such a procedure, however, is to be found not only in drama. Virginia Woolf's The Waves is a particularly good example of how it functions in the novel. In this novel, the speaker of a text segment is marked by the repetitive phrases, "said Bernard," "said Susan," "said Rhoda," "said Neville," "said Jinny," and "said Louis." Yet, ever since the advent of modernism, such an assignment, particularly in the novel, has become tricky, because the formal signs are often missing. It is interesting, however, that despite this, attentive readers often have relatively little trouble piecing the text together. This is clearly because they can make use of other information--perhaps of a thematic nature, or based on the plot. If, for example, a particular topic or action was already associated once with a character or an "agent," further passages of the text need only refer back to this topic or action in order to create a connection to that character.

The other aspect to be taken into account when discussing literary character is the fact that the figuring-forth takes place on the stage of the reader's imagination. This means that it is not only the text that is relevant, but also all the information and ideas about "people" to be found in the consciousness of the recipient. This includes social schemata, prototypes, and category systems, as well as an "implicit personality theory": i.e., a system of convictions that guides each of us in perceiving and judging other human beings (see Hastorf et al., Schneider, "Toward," and Jones 87). As a consequence, all figures in our imagination, including those formed in the reading of literary texts, are subjective. Fortunately, however, it can be shown that this subjectivity is considerably reduced by the fact that implicit personality theories are closely connected to so-called "social stereotypes" (Jahnke 76, Jones 77-111), and therefore largely collective. Incidentally, literature in particular can give evidence of this if one interprets literary texts as traces of the worldview-hence the personality theory--of their authors and the time in which they were produced. In doing so, one is then operating with two types of presupposition, two implicit personality theories: that of the author, definitive for the text production, and that of the recipient. These two implicit theories can of course be identical, but do not have to be, and are usually quite different when there is a significant temporal or cultural distance between author and reader. One need only observe the varying judgements passed on literary characters in interpretations, the differing conception and portrayal of a role on stage or in film, and the differences between visual illustrations of the "same" character. An assessment of a 'literary character" as an imagining of a person therefore requires in each specific case an investigation of the most important social stereotypes and "personality theories" current not only at the time when the text was produced but in other times as well. Such is the indispensable historical and cultural element of an analysis of literary characters for which even the most elaborate systematic treatment is no substitute. 3. The Process of Figuration A figure on the stage of our imagination that has been formed during the reception of a literary work is a mental construct. Therefore psychological experiments in the area of "person perception" or "interpersonal perception" (see Jahnke, Cantor and Mischel, Jones) are very important for an understanding of the process of figuring-forth. However, figures based on literary texts are not formed under the same conditions as those based on experience in everyday empirical reality since their constitution takes place as a result of reading a particular text. With literary texts, in other words, it is possible to specify more exactly the "objective" conditions of their coming into being. Literary studies are therefore called upon. After all, the formation of figures from the textual signs that make up literary characters is in a certain sense a controlled process: a figuring-forth based on the sequential constitution of meaning in the course of the successive perception of a certain linguistic text. Since such texts are structured in a linear mode and their production or reception is determined either by their being caught in the flow of time (in the case of speaking or listening) or by conventions (in the case of writing or reading, for example, it is from left to

right and from top to bottom in most western languages), the essential operation for the creation of meaning in general, and for the formation of figures in the imagination in particular, is a unidirectional temporal process. Just as in speaking or writing the complex and simultaneous phenomenon of an imagined figure has to be translated into the linear structure of language texts, in listening or reading the successively perceived pieces of information have to be transformed into a simultaneously imagined figure. That the "simultaneously" or holistically present characteristics of a real person can only be expressed successively in language when describing that person, thus making it necessary for the listener or reader to once again synthesize this successively registered information into a "simultaneously" imagined "person," is a condition that also holds true for imagined figures. As empirical studies of what is called "impression formation" have shown, this state of affairs--which is constitutive of all language use and can therefore be considered to be self-evident--has consequences that are by no means self-evident (Asch 258-90, Luchins, "Forming" 318-25, and Goffman 96108). One such consequence is that, during the process of reading or listening, the initial, scanty information about a character, even just a name, already motivates the formation of a notion of the "whole" character. In part this is an empty frame to be subsequently filled out; in part, however, a figure already completed in the imagination through the use of social schemata, prototypes, and the already mentioned implicit personality theory of the recipient (Luchins and Luchins 243-52). Once a name or the category of a person ("my friend") has been mentioned, we assume, for instance, that the "person" has two arms and two legs, can walk and think and feel--as long, that is, as none of these features has been expressly negated. And, when the opportunity is provided, characteristics typical of a male character or a particular profession are further assumed ("my uncle" or "our doctor"). What is more, the extent to which one is subjectively convinced of the correctness of such a "completed" image stands in curious disproportion to the scantiness of the information provided (Jahnke 69, Jones 88). Another in no way self-evident consequence of the text-induced process of imagining a person consists in the fact that the particularity of the imagined figure depends not only on the type of information we are given, but also on the order of its presentation. Because the initial bits of information play a particularly important role, one speaks of a "primacy effect," which cannot be seen as a hard and fast "law of primacy," (2) but which nonetheless could be proved in eightyeight percent of the cases examined by Norman Anderson and A. A. Barrios. (3) However, if the test subjects were cautioned to avoid hasty conclusions before or while receiving the information, the "primacy effect" was not only reduced but was even transformed into a "recency effect" whereby the information received later about a person played the dominant role (Luchins, "Primacy"). Subsequent research has also shown that the influence of the "primacy effect" depends on the personality structure--in particular the "cognitive complexity"--of the person judging the information: in our case, the reader (Mayo and Crockett). In other words, it depends on the reader's ability to apply, with the help of cognitive structures, a differentiated grid of categories when perceiving a person and to tolerate and integrate to a great extent any contradictions which might appear

(Seiler, Schneewind). In spite of this, the basic importance of the "primacy effect" still obtains. (4) The results of such psychological studies are of direct relevance to the treatment of figures formed while reading literary texts because in the relevant experiments the pieces of information were given in text form. For example, the test subjects were asked to create an image of a fictional person based on a list of characteristics and then to describe this person. Taking these results into account, we can specify the process of figuring-forth in more detail. 3.1 Although the information about a literary character is successively registered in the process of reading and is therefore full of gaps, particularly at the outset, readers or listeners already tend at a very early point to create a notion of the character as a whole and figure it forth. In addition, they also tend to be subjectively quite convinced of the correctness of what they have produced or constructed. Even readers who are literary scholars and who know that characters are only constituted gradually during the act of reading and that "before reading" they exist at best as chains of linguistic signs which contain potential information--even such readers are prepared after the first bits of information to conceive of a character as if he or she were already totally "there" but simply not (yet) completely known to them. The supplementation of the given information in the effort to imaginatively complete the character is based on prejudices held by individual readers. But, as it turns out, such prejudices are usually shared to a large extent by other contemporaries or members of the same society and possess therefore the character of social schemata, prototypes and stereotypes. Such "mental models" (Johnson: Laird) consist of combinations of certain characteristics whose unity is guaranteed by communal experience and convention. They can be based on very general facts such as the gender, age, or temperament of a person; on more specific social factors such as nationality, social status, profession, or dress; and, finally, on more individual aspects such as looks, gestures, actions, language, thoughts, or feelings. (5) Literature in particular has played an important role in the establishment of such prototypes and stereotypes, from the characters in the comedies and satirical portraits of antiquity to the exemplars in medieval sermons and character books, from the typical dramatis personae in the newer comedies and early novels to the minstrel show, the western, and comic book and cartoon figures, to name just a few typical manifestations. The use of such stereotypes allows the reader to infer more or less schematically the mindset and inner qualities of literary figures from their external characteristics and actions, much like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. (1.2.189-92)

The process of imagining figures while reading fiction or viewing plays can, of course, be discouraged when literary characters become stereotypical to the point of caricature; it can moreover be obstructed or even foiled when the text presents information that cannot at all be synthesized or when it abounds in metafictional commentary stressing the merely linguistic existence of a name and the mostly conflicting character traits attached to it. From the fact that this latter strategy is to be found quite frequently in the earlier postmodern novel, Thomas Docherty has drawn wide-ranging conclusions. He interprets such a postmodern strategy as a liberation of the reader marking the beginning of a new era, not only of writing, but of history. He presents these views, however, without acknowledging that strategies of deconstruction presuppose just as strong an urge to construct; in fact, by the time he published his theses the return to more straightforward storytelling and character-building had already begun. (6) 3.2 Precisely because a more or less schematic or detailed figuration of a character as a whole is already undertaken on the basis of very scanty information, it is necessary during the process of reading or listening to connect information about a character which comes later not only with earlier information, but also with the total imagined figure which already exists at that point. (7) Such new information either becomes part of the figure as is, adding to and clarifying it, or it necessitates modification--even to the extent of a wholly fresh figuring-forth (see also Halasz 9-10). The continuous process of character-building during reading is of course most interesting if new information continually appears which can only with some effort be integrated into the already existing figure. And it is precisely the fact that we tend to imagine fairly complete figures right from the start that enables such a constant shift between fulfilled and frustrated expectations, thus creating suspense. In opposition to the mechanism whereby the given information is supplemented with the help of presuppositions, conflicts between new information and the existing notion of a character are usually solved by ignoring one part of the information--in most cases, later information. At any rate, this is what empirical studies have shown (Anderson and Jacobson, Anderson and Norman, Jahnke 73). If later, not easily integrated pieces of information are not simply ignored, the reader can either discard the image of the character he has had until this point, speculating whether the author has perhaps intentionally misled him (as is often the case in the detective novel), or the reader will regard both conceptions--the original one and the new one he has still to construct--as "correct" and assume that the character (or his or her looks or personality) have changed. The latter explanation suggests itself whenever the "change of character" appears possible within the reader's implicit personality theory and seems plausible in the context of the portrayed events. Such a change in character according to the schema of "character development" as we know it from the real world has become the structural principle of a specific subgenre of the novel, the so-called Bildungsroman, for example, Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister), Gottfried Keller's Der Grune Heinrich (Green

Harry), and Adalbert Stifter's Der Nachsommer (Indian Summer). A third possibility for the reader, finally, could be to assume that the author--due either to inability or by design--has made the imagining of a figure impossible through the stringing together of information which resists synthesis, so that the reader (so long as he sticks to the text) cannot achieve what the text itself makes impossible to construct. In this case we are dealing with a so-called "break" in character or--as in quite a few postmodern novels--with an intentional destruction of the character's coherence in order to deconstruct the "normal" process of character building. One must add, however, that the ability to synthesize information about a character which at first sight appears to be contradictory or disparate depends as much on the implicit personality theory and cognitive complexity of the reader as on the type and sequence of the information found in the text. A "break in character" can also result if one attempts to synthesize the pertinent textual information by means of a personality theory that is quite different from the one used by the author when creating his characters. A typical example of this is the pointless attempt to expect psychologically consistent behavior from the figure of Lear in Shakespeare's tragedy when the play was actually written for a rhetorical theater, and a more recent case in point is the problem one will have with the characters in Donald Barthelme's Snow White, if one has no inkling of the groupie-philosophy of the 1960s. 3.3 The fact that the initial pieces of information in the process of impressionformation have greater importance than those that follow ("primacy effect") is especially apparent when it comes to the imagining of literary--and thereby fictional--figures. This is due to the fact that these figures do not "really" exist and that there is thus no possibility of either supporting or refuting "prejudices" by actually encountering these characters in the empirical world. The only "test" available is the compatibility of the successively received characteristics, actions, etc.--in other words, the internal consistency of the figuration, including all changes or "developments" in the character insofar as they are motivated and thus credible. When analyzing the creation of such a figure both in production and reception, it is therefore essential to look very closely at the initial pieces of information, not only with regard to their selection and combination, but also with regard to their possible compatibility with existing social stereotypes. It is of course impossible within the limits of this essay to do justice to all the possible varieties of introductions to characters. A few illustrations may, however, be useful to at least indicate what I am getting at. Thus when Fielding introduces his hero in Tom Jones as "an Infant, wrapt up in some coarse Linnen, in a sweet and profound Sleep [...]" and when the first person to see this child describes him as "the Beauty of Innocence" (1: 39), these initial data already determine later notions of Jones in the rest of the novel. A similar scenario is to be found in Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room. The hero is introduced to the reader at an age and in a situation in which he is beginning to make his own discoveries and escape the control of his mother. She says, "Well,

if Jacob doesn't want to play [...]. Where is that tiresome little boy?" (7-8). When Jacob then carries off, against her will, the skull of a sheep which he has found, she comments: "And Jacob is such a handful; so obstinate already. 'Throw it away, dear, do', [...] but Jacob squirmed away from her [...]" (13). The impression we gain here is already of a person who has a very strong will and tends to withdraw from others. Despite the abundance of the information that follows about Jacob later in the novel, this initial impression holds for the protagonist throughout the text. These examples should encourage us as scholars to develop a keen sense for the specificity of character introductions during the attentive reading and analysis of many different instances. They also lead us to assume that authors, whether consciously or not, are making use of the primacy effect and that nothing in their sequencing of information is accidental. 3.4 What is perhaps the most important aspect of the process of imagining figures on the basis of what one reads has not yet been broached. I am referring to the act of synthesis whereby different successive pieces of information are all connected to what is conceived as one and the same figure despite all "developments" of the character. In the discussion of the preconditions for figuring-forth literary characters, I have already pointed out that a text has to meet certain requirements for the synthesis of successive pieces of information--first into a "character," then into a figure. I am now concerned with the specific role of the reader or listener in this synthesis: he or she must assume that the successively communicated bits of information all refer to a single underlying "character" in order to imagine a figure not only with a particular body but also by analogy with the experiences of one's own consciousness. This process of "understanding" others based on our own experience is, however, not specific to literature--it is the basis of our construction of every real "you" and is thus one of the foundations of the social world (Schtitz). There is an essentially "unprovable" assumption that other creatures which look like people are as conscious of themselves as we are, and this forms the basis of our behavior in the world. As a consequence, we are apparently prepared to make the same assumption in cases where direct connection with "reality" does not exist-that is, when we are imagining fictional figures on the basis of a text. This assumption is so strong that even when given very contradictory information we at first always attempt to save the synthesis--and the character's consistency--with the help of concepts such as "change" or "development." It is only when all attempts at synthesis fail that we are prepared to speak of a "break" in character or suspect an intentional deconstruction of the unity of the subject. In the course of synthesizing, the reader or listener looks for characteristics which remain constant despite all other change, thus serving as reference points for the identity of the character. A mere name might be enough, as long as the successive pieces of information clearly refer to that name. Within the linguistic sign system, it is clearly the repetitions of names or pronouns that support a

sense of identity. With his demonstration of Locke's concepts in the figure of Uncle Toby, Laurence Sterne in Tristram Shandy has created a matchless example of how this can be taken to the extremes of bizarreness. The extent to which the conception of a character as an unmistakable, individual creation corresponds to recent psychological concepts is even apparent in the work of Jacques Lacan, who taking Poe's "The Purloined Letter" as an example (9-43), reduced the unity of the subject to the "repetition compulsion." This suggests that the repetitions just mentioned are not merely restricted to characteristic behavior, typical gestures and actions, or language. As a "drive to repetition" they are also to be found in the area of perspective, opinions, points of view, and ways of thinking. It is these repetitions in particular that allow the reader or listener to make predictions--to risk imagining the persistent personality of a figure. As already indicated, however, the process of successive figuring-forth while reading is made attractive precisely by the taking of a further risk, by imagining a figure that is not merely based on the information already given in the text. 4. The Result of the Creation of Illusion Although we form various notions about literary characters and already figure them forth during the process of reading, what we tend to retain mentally (and what is normally referred to as literary characters in literary criticism) are those figures that we have imagined after the completion of at least one reading of the entire work that motivated their imagining. More or less complex figures that have come not only into our private, but also into our collective consciousness can be, and have been, classified according to such categories as gender, age, descent, education, status, profession, temperament, etc. just like real people (for example, Gutermuth, van der Veen, Galbraith, and Starke). This is often done with the intention of learning more about the preferences and dislikes found in particular authors, genres or periods, thus enabling the critic to arrive at hypotheses about implicit underlying personality theories and mentalities. E. M. Forster has suggested two revealing possibilities for classification, of which the second has become universally familiar. He first differentiates between Homo Fictus and Homo Sapiens. In contrast to Homo Sapiens, Homo Fictus is generally born off, he is capable of dying on, he wants little food or sleep, he is tirelessly occupied with human relationships. And--most important--we can know more about him than we can know about any of our fellow creatures, because his creator and narrator are one. (63) Despite the humor in this passage, and the opening allusion to "staginess," the comparison with a "real" person is not entirely fair. If the comparison is to work, it is not a question of what real people do but of what they talk about. Although humans spend one third of their lives sleeping, they do not talk all that much about it unless of course they cannot sleep and lament this fact. It would

therefore not at all be "realistic" if the narrator or the characters were to speak about their sleep or their breakfast, and so on. Unless we have been expressly informed otherwise, we tend to imagine that Homo Fictus will be exactly like Homo Sapiens; so the author can use a kind of shorthand in the writing of character and leave out everything he does not want to emphasize. Of more importance is the point that it is possible to know more about fictional characters than about any other person we might meet in the real world, because the narrator is also the creator of the characters. It is indeed true that an author can reveal the most secret feelings of his creation to the reader, whether by means of an omniscient narrator or through the use of stream of consciousness; and the attractiveness of literary figures depends as a rule more on the revelation of their inner lives than on the presentation of their actions. It is interesting, however, that the listener or reader does not perceive these insights into the characters' inner lives as a break with the rules of probability, even though in the real world the inner lives of other people cannot be accessed directly, but must be inferred from what they say and do. Here, too, the difference between fictional figures and real people becomes narrower if one considers that while it may indeed only be possible to guess at the inner lives of others--their thoughts, feelings, intentions and so on--by means of their expression in language and action, this is a speculation with which we engage obsessively. Therefore, even though we do not know the inner lives of other people, we constantly act as though we did know them, for we act and react not on the basis of sound and movement, but on our sizing-up of linguistic meaning and actions. With fictional characters it is simply that speculation about their inner lives seems already to have been engaged in by the narrator or author. The imagining of plausible figures, therefore, is apparently not hindered when the reader or listener is confronted with a "transparent" fictional world, including the inner lives of the characters. The second of Forster's classifications is the well-known differentiation between "flat and round" characters (75). He holds that in their purest form "flat" characters--also known as types or caricatures--are based on only one idea or characteristic and that for this reason they are easily recognized when they reappear and are easy for a reader to remember because they remain stable regardless of the situation in which they find themselves. In addition, Forster points out that their effect is greatest if they are comical; he thinks that a serious or tragic figure who is a flat character is merely boring. Conversely, the possibility of harboring surprise is seen as the definitive mark of a "round" character: "The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat" (85). This differentiation is taken up here not only because it is widely known but also because it is one of the few earlier theories which refers to the act of figuring-forth and to the impact on the reader. Unfortunately however, the metaphoric labels "flat" and "round" are as misleading as the effect of the alternatives they indicate is misjudged. A figure like Uncle Toby, who is definitely based on only one idea or characteristic, will presumably be as "round" on the stage of our imagination as any other, and such a figure can indeed surprise us, precisely because it remains entirely devoted to an idee fixe regardless of the situation in which it finds itself. One wonders

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whether a figure like Lady Macbeth--who, due to her obsessive ambition, according to Forster would have to be termed a rather "flat" character--is really boring; after all she is a serious and tragic figure. We can arrive at a much more subtle differentiation of literary figures by paying close attention to their genesis: that is, to their sequential constitution during the process of reading. What we will thus obtain is a profile of successive figurations based on a very specific sequence of varied or repetitive pieces of information offered by the text. This profile will enable us to describe precisely how impressions like simplicity or complexity, stability or changeability, reliability or unreliability of character are produced--or, rather, strongly suggested, because the reader always plays a role in this process. Close observation of both the kind of detailed information pertaining to a character and the sequence in which it is presented will even allow us to arrive inductively at a credible hypothesis about the implied personality theory employed by the author, and will therefore help us to extend our own theory by a further dimension. For as long as we naively submit the information offered by the text to the selective categories and synthesizing methods of our own personality theory, or consciously submit it to some borrowed prestigious theory, we are creating imagined figures in our own or somebody else's image, while pretending that they were "in" and have come "out of' the text. A well-known example is the "successful" application of one and the same explicit personality theory--say, that of a Freud or Lacan--to any number of quite different texts from quite different periods. When, in the act of reading, the pieces of information considered as being pertinent are selected and subsequently synthesized on the basis of such a theory, it is no wonder that subsequently the figures resulting from this process of constitution lend themselves exceedingly well to being described and analyzed by it. In order to escape such a vicious circle, it seems necessary for the professional critic not only to avoid being selective regarding the pertinent information given by the text but also to take into account the personality theories prevalent within the culture and period in which the text was written. Even though we can expect that what we encounter in literary works are alternative worlds, these tend to be largely influenced by the dominant worldview to which they present an alternative. And there is almost always the chance to go to relevant referential texts in order to learn about the implied personality theory or theories which the authors could be more or less sure their readers were acquainted with--for these are the ones they would reckon with when creating their characters in order to achieve the desired effects. And one could add that the way the same figures are imagined and described in interpretations from a later time or a different culture will tell us whether and how the implied personality theory has changed. In this way the analysis of literary figures inevitably acquires a cultural-historical dimension. Only if we respect the fact that what is possible at any historical moment is less than what is theoretically possible will we have a chance of escaping from the seductive charms of Narcissus's mirror image. Notes

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(1) See Halasz, Gerrig and Allbritton, and Ralf Schneider (Grundriss zur kognitiven Theorie der Figurenrezeption am Beispiel des viktorianischen Romans [Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literary Character: The Dynamics of Mental-Model Construction]). (2) This phenomenon had already been formulated in 1925 by F. H. Lund. (3) Besides Anderson and Barrios, see Asch, Luchins, Goffman, and Jahnke. (4) For a well-balanced view, see Jones 84-86. (5) Edward Jones subsumes all these features under the term "categorial expectancies" (79). (6) Steven Cohan has been quite effective in mustering a defense against the post-structuralist thesis that "'character' is the product of a repression of personality" (6-7, 21). (7) See the detailed study of the process of reading in Iser. An instructive example for the topic under discussion can be found on 138. Works Cited Anderson, Norman H., and A. A. Barrios. "Primacy Effects in Personality Impression Formation." The Nature of Theory and Research in Social Psychology. Ed. Clyde Hendrick and Rusell A. Jones. New York: Academic Press, 1972. 21018. --, and Ann Jacobson. "Effect of Stimulus Inconsistency and Discounting Instructions in Personality Impression Formation." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2 (1965): 531-39. --, and Ann Norman. "Order Effects in Impression Formation in Four Classes of Stimuli." Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology 69 (1964): 467-71. Asch, Solomon. "Forming Impressions of Personality," Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology 41 (1946): 258-90. Britting, Georg. Lebenslauf eines dicken Mannes, der Hamlet hiess. Munich: Langen-Muller, 1932. Cantor, Nancy, and Walter Mischel. "Prototypes in Person Perception." Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Ed. Leonard Berkowitz. New York: Academic, 1979. 3-52. Cohan, Steven. "Figures Beyond the Text: A Theory of Readable Character in the Novel." Novel 17 (1983): 5-27.

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Doblin, Alfred. Hamlet oder die lange Nacht nimmt kein Ende. Munich: LangenMuller, 1956. Docherty, Thomas. Reading (Absent) Character: Towards a Theory of Characterization in Fiction. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983. Fielding, Henry. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. 1749. Ed. Martin. C. Battestin and Fredson Bowers. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1974. Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. 1927. Rpt. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1968. Galbraith, Lois Hall. The Established Clergy as Depicted in English Prose Fiction from 1740 to 1800. Philadelphia: L. H. Galbraith, 1950. Gerrig, Richard J., and David W. Allbritton. "The Construction of Literary Character: A View from Cognitive Psychology." Style 24 (1990): 380-91. Goffman, Erving. "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life." The Sociology of Personality. Ed. Stephan P. Spitzer. New York: Van Nostrand, 1969.96-108. Gutermuth, E. "Das Kind im englischen Roman von Richardson bis Dickens." Giessener Beitrage zur Erforschung der Sprache und Kultur Englands und NordAmerikas 2 (Giessen 1925): (Part 1): 29-60. Halasz, Laszlo. "Cognitive and Social Psychological Approaches to Literary Discourse. An Overview." Literary Discourse: Aspects of Cognitive and Social Psychological Approaches. Ed. Halasz. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1987. 1-37. Hastorf, Albert H., David J. Schneider, and Judith Polefka. Person Perception, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1970. Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. Jahnke, Jurgen. Interpersonale Wahrnehmung. Stuttgart: Urban, 1975. Johnson-Laird, Philip N. Mental Models. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Jones, Edward E. Interpersonal Perception. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1990. Lacan, Jacques. Schriften I. Ed. Norbert Haas. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1975. Luchins, Abraham S. "Forming Impressions of Personality. A Critique." Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology 43 (1948): 318-25. --. "Primacy-Recency in Impression Formation." The Order of Presentation in Persuasion. Ed. Carl I. Hovland. New Haven: Yale UP, 1957. 33-61.

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--, and Edith H. Luchins. "Effects of Preconceptions and Communications on Impressions of a Person." Journal of Social Psychology 81 (1970): 243-52. Lund, Frederick Hansen. "The Psychology of Belief IV: The Law of Primacy in Persuasion," Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology 20 (1925): 183-91. Margolin, Uri. "Characterization in Narrative: Some Theoretical Prolegomena." Neophilologus 67 (1983): 1-14. --. "Individuals in Narrative Worlds: An Ontological Perspective." Poetics Today 11 (1990): 843-71. --. "Introducing and Sustaining Characters in Literary Narrative: A Set of Conditions." Style 21 (1987): 107-24. --. "Structuralist Approaches to Character in Narrative: The State of the Art." Semiotica 75 (1989): 1-24. Mayo, Clara W., and William H. Crockett. "Cognitive Complexity and PrimacyRecency Effects in Impression Formation." Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology 68 (1964): 335-38. Schneewind, Klaus A. "Kognitive Komplexitat, Personlichkeit und Zustimmungstendenz." Berichte uber den 27. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Psychologie in Kiel 1970. Ed. Gunter Reinert. Gottingen: Hogrefe, 1973. 820-28. Schneider, Ralf. Grundriss zur kognitiven Theorie der Figurenrezeption am Beispiel des viktorianischen Romans. Tubingen: Stauffenburg, 2000. --. "Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literary Character: The Dynamics of MentalModel Construction." Style 35 (2001): 607-40. Schutz, Alfred. Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt: Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1974. Seiler, Thomas Bernhard, ed. Kognitive Strukturiertheit. Theorien--Analysen-Befunde. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1973. Starke, Catherina Juanita. Black Portraiture in American Fiction: Stock Characters, Archetypes, and Individuals. New York: Basic Books, 1971. Van der Veen, Harm R. Jewish Characters in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction and Drama. Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1935. Wilson, John. "Monologue or Soliloquy on the Annals." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 26 (1829): 149-51.

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Woolf, Virginia. Jacob's Room. 1922. The Uniform Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf. London: Hogarth Press, 1929. 3:7-290. This is a revised translation of Herbert Grabes, "Wie aus Satzen Personen werden ... Uber die Erforschung literarischer Figuren" (Poetica 10 [1978]: 405-28). Herbert Grabes Justus Liebeg University, Giessen COPYRIGHT 2004 Northern Illinois University COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_2_38/ai_n14932836/print

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