No Emmas in Amaurotum: Theories of Character and Utopian Literature
Fecha
1996Resumen
The narratological category of character has been less successful
than others in doing away with assumptions that derive from the historical/
critical usage of the label, particularly in a realistic, novelistic
mainstream. The very attempt to build a theory of character that is intrinsic
to the utopian genre shows how difficult it is to eliminate these
criteria, but also to determine to what extent they should be retained,
specially when a strict segregationist logic is applied to utopias and to
notions of character in utopias, if the aesthetic superiority of the realistic/
novelistic character still hovers on descriptions. Making the narrative
“frame” of utopias a more functional and neutral component has
interesting effects in the classification of information about the individuals
of utopian fictions, and allows for important intra-generic (aesthetic)
distinctions. An analysis of the characters of More’s Utopia and
Bacon’s New Atlantis illustrates the relevance of a principle of reflexivity
between social ideals and the characters of these two works.