Individuality and Inwardness in the Literary Character Sketches of the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

The writer discusses the development of ideas of individuality and inwardness in literary character sketches of the 17th century. Today, “character” is defined as the moral essence of individuality and autonomy, but, in the 17th century, a character was firstly a representation of a certain group of human beings, with the focus on the type rather than the individual. The 17th century, however, is often seen as the time when the ideas of individuality and inwardness began to gain influence. The rise of the literary character sketch at this time is often attributed to the publication of Isaac Casaubon's Latin translation of Theophrastus's Characters in 1592. The writer discusses this work and its relation to the Aristotelian corpus in order to show how a character sketch can represent a certain category of people, and he goes on to examine the methods of depicting characters set out in the rhetorical treatises. Finally, he examines the growing friction that arose between an increasing awareness of individuality and inwardness and the traditional code of representation on which literary character sketches were based.