Shakespeare seems to have created the dynamic character, for as Harold Bloom notes in his introduction to his Major Literary Characters series: The former refers to characters who change in some way over the course of a narrative, while the latter refers to characters who remain the same. The terms “dynamic character” and “static character” apparently predate Forster, and they refer to altogether different types of personages. Flat characters may have single personality traits, but they needn’t be uninteresting: take, for instance, Romeo and Juliet‘s Mercutio - a character remembered only for his bawdy commentary on life - who is entirely absorbing, but entirely flat in terms of characterization. The main characters of narratives are generally round - Dickens’s Pip springs readily to mind - though this is by no means a prerequisite. Forster points out that both types of characters are essential to any narrative, and I tend to agree with him - if all literature consisted of only round characters, then every novel would read like War and Peace. Forster in his lecture, Aspects of the Novel (1927), refer to characters with multiple, often contradictory personality traits and those with a single character trait. Q: “What is the difference between a ’round character’ and a ‘dynamic character’?”Ī: The terms “round character” and “flat character,” first coined by British novelist E.M.
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