The authorial delusion: counting lady Macbeth’s children

ABSTRACT

In 1933, literary critic L. C. Knights published a caustic essay against the notion cultivated by certain of his colleagues, predominantly A. C. Bradley, that Shakespeare is a ‘great creator of characters’. Knights (1973) regarded the examination of isolated particles such as ‘character’ as disorientating, alleging that an analysis of this sort obscures the greater merit of language. Knight’s polemic essentially stands in the threshold of the dissention between formalists and realists: the former consider the examination of the fictional narrative as anything but a textual construct a scholarly faux pas; the latter regard the referential relationship between text and the world as a foundation for the creation of fiction. This is a pseudo-dilemma. The notion that literature is denuded of its artistic merit once it is defined by its constituent artefacts is disorienting, for it completely bypasses the dynamics of its creation. Put differently, a post-event analysis can exist as a standalone act, albeit it cannot challenge or dismiss the foundational principles of the event’s creation process.

KEYWORDS:

• Fictional character
• creative processes
• theory of mind
• imaginary dialogues
• character construction
• creative writing theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Lina P Varotsi obtained her PhD from the University of Gloucester, under the supervision of Prof Peter Childs, Dr Kate North and Dr Martin Randall. Her thesis, entitled ‘Characterisation and Exposition: A Paradigm of Character Creation’ entails a philosophical approach to character construction, and amalgamates interdisciplinary elements such as Theory of Mind, Social Psychology, Theory of Person, Cultural Studies, Socio-linguistics and Literary Theory. She is particularly interested in inter-disciplinary applications of Creative Writing, as well as a theory of adaptation across a range of media, and the theory surrounding the fictional agent.

Notes

1 A modified version of this paper can be found in my PhD thesis ‘Conceptualisation and Exposition: A Paradigm of Character Creation’