What a Character

Characters in literature from a variety of perspectives

Welcome to my weekly collection of links from literary and cultural magazines. Each week, I’ll cover a different topic and provide interesting perspectives on it through essays and reviews. I invite you to explore these articles, gain new insights and learn something new. Be sure to check back each week for a new set of articles to read and discuss!

The People We Know Best (NYRB, 2021)

Readers love fictional characters almost as if they were real people. Literary scholars are just starting to take them more seriously.

• CHARACTER: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies (book)

• CHARACTER: The History of a Cultural Obsession (book)

• CHARACTER AS FORM (book)

• BALZAC’S LIVES (book)

Making something of ourselves (TLS, 2021)

The history of character, and how we shape it

• CHARACTER: The History of a Cultural Obsession (book)

• BECOMING DUCHESS GOLDBLATT (book)

Uncanny Elizabethan autofiction (TLS, 2020)

Two ways of understanding early modern personhood

• PAPER MONSTERS: Persona and literary culture in Elizabethan England (book)

• RENAISSANCE PERSONHOOD: Materiality, taxonomy, process (book)