Other types of narrative characters

Other types of narrative characters from earlier literatures even more remarkably violate modern models. We might recall again Scholes and Kellogg’s discussion of archetypal characters in the Nature of Narrative, which I also noted in chapter 1. They distinguish between two different types of characterization, the “typical” and the “archetypical.”42 Scholes and Kellogg describe a quality of character that is not simply a matter of the mimetic accumulation of significant traits. There seems to be, instead, an allegorical dimension to the character that departs from the kinds of semantic contrasts that Bal and other narratologists describe. There is a quality to a Quixote, Scholes and Kellogg imply, that seems to encompass the whole work rather than functioning by contrasts within it. This discussion of corporeal assumptions within modern narratology certainly suggests that critics need far more historical sensitivity to the assumptions about corporeality before they can discuss the comparative poetics of various periods and cultures.