FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29  
30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   >>  
less and appealing. As for the harsh satiric animus of a character-writer like Butler, it is totally alien to Gally, who would chide good-naturedly, so as "not to seem to make any Attacks upon the Province of Self-Love" in the reader. "Each Man," he writes, "contains a little World within himself, and every Heart is a new World." The writer should understand and appreciate, not ridicule, an individual's uniqueness. Of course, the character as Theophrastus wrote it described the type, not the particular person. Gally, who sets up Theophrastus as his model, apparently fails to realize that a "humourist" like Sir Roger verges on individuality. Indeed, while discussing the need for writers to study their own and other men's passions, he emphasizes that "without a Knowledge of these Things, 'twill be impossible ever to draw a Character so to the Life, as that it shall hit one Person, and him only." Here Gally might well be talking of the Clarendon kind of portrait. If a character is "one Person, and him only," he is no longer a type, but somebody peculiarly himself. Gally, then, is not as Theophrastan as he professes to be. True, he harks back to Theophrastus in matters of style and technique. And he does not criticize him, as does La Bruyere,[6] for paying too much attention to a man's external actions, and not enough to his "Thoughts, Sentiments, and Inclinations." Nevertheless his mind is receptive to the kind of individuated characterization soon to distinguish the mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne. A man can be A Flatterer or A Blunt Man and still retain a private identity: this private identity Gally recognizes as important. Gally's essay thus reflects fundamental changes in the English attitude toward human nature and its literary representation. Alexander H. Chorney Fellow, Clark Library Los Angeles, California Notes to the Introduction 1. _The Characters, Or The Manners of the Age. By Monsieur De La Bruyere of the French Academy. Made English by several hands. With the Characters of Theophrastus..._ 1699. 2 vols. 2. Isaac Casaubon's Latin edition of Theophrastus appeared in 1592 and was reprinted frequently during the seventeenth century. 3. Eustace Budgell, _The Moral Characters of Theophrastus_ (1714), Preface, sig. a5. 4. _Ibid._, sig. a6 verso. 5. For a full a
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29  
30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   >>  



Top keywords:
Theophrastus
 
Characters
 

character

 

identity

 

Person

 

private

 

writer

 

century

 

Bruyere

 
English

attitude
 

Flatterer

 

retain

 

important

 

recognizes

 
fundamental
 

reflects

 

characterization

 
distinguish
 

individuated


receptive

 

Sentiments

 

Inclinations

 

Nevertheless

 
eighteenth
 

Thoughts

 

analyzing

 

rigidly

 

measuring

 

calibrates


Evadne
 
Fellow
 
edition
 

appeared

 

Casaubon

 
reprinted
 

Preface

 

Budgell

 

frequently

 
seventeenth

Eustace

 
Library
 

Angeles

 

California

 

Chorney

 
literary
 
representation
 
Alexander
 

Introduction

 
Monsieur