Plautus Stock Characters

1. Com Media Dell'arte Stock Characters

Ancient Greece. In a stricter definition, stock characters originated in the theater. For example, the Greek Old Comedy of Aristophanes typically employed three stock characters: the alazon, the boastful imposter; his ironic opponent, the eiron; and the buffoon, known as the bomolochos.

Does the cast of characters in your novel or short story fall under some of these categories? Take care that your characters don’t fall into the cliché trap: If you find that they resemble one of the stereotypes below, reconsider your characterization or at least provide the dramatis persona with a distinguishing personality characteristic that’s a twist on the same old, same old.

1. Antihero: This character, a protagonist (typically seen in detective and adventure genres) whose personality flaws distinguish him or her from a standard hero, is inherently much more interesting than the upstanding counterpart. The key characteristic is usually misanthropy, but that’s not enough to round a character out. An antihero must have a solid foundation on which to stand.

2. Absent-minded professor: Perhaps Professor Fumblebuttons is just pretending to be a shock-haired scientist who can’t remember where he put his glasses (“Um, the glasses you’re wearing?”). What’s his motive for his deception?

3. Boy/girl next door: Is John or Mary really what he or she seems? What dark secret does that wholesome countenance conceal? This character easily pales in comparison with a complicated villain or sidekick, so make an extra effort to invest your protagonist with personality — or relegate the squeaky-clean persona to a secondary role.

4. Clown/fool: Traditionally, the court jester — often someone of fragile mental stability or feigning the same — was the only person allowed to mock or question his powerful patron, and his antics involved not only lighthearted entertainment but also sometimes barbed satire or veiled criticism. A comic-relief character needs to be more than just a wisecracking or mischievous type. Perhaps he’s the omniscient narrator, or he’s pretending to be a smart-aleck to divert attention from his true purpose.

5. Damsel in distress: The helpless young maiden is one of the most tired tropes in storytelling — and so is the helpless young maiden turned butt-kicking babe. Better yet, imbue your ingenue with the characteristics of another character type, either one on this list or another stock persona.

6. Everyman: The peril of presenting a character designed to represent everyone is that he will appeal to no one. Make sure your everyman (or everywoman, or boy or girl edition) possesses enough distinguishing characteristics to be interesting, even intriguing. Remember: Relentlessly virtuous characters are boring, and stories in which they have no real challenges fail to engage readers.

7. Femme fatale: The enduring appeal of the deceptive villainess is whether she is in fact aiding or thwarting the protagonist. It’s a balancing act to keep readers guessing to the very end of the story—and that may not be enough. What if your femme fatale is herself deceived, either by the protagonist or by a third character? Twists within twists keep this trope fresh.

8. Hooker with a heart of gold: The bad girl turned good girl is a nice repudiation of moral intolerance, but it’s a stale stereotype. As in the case of her sister the femme fatale, readers shouldn’t be able to predict how she will behave. Is a second-act act of kindness part of a climactic ruse? Is she pressured to betray the protagonist, or is it part of her own plot?

9. Knight-errant: This bright-eyed variant of the hero can drag down a story with him (or her) — take care that the conscientious crusader is not too glistening of tooth and sparkling of eye. The most interesting knight-errant in literature is Don Quixote, who was an abject failure (and was all the more appealing for his indefatigable idealism).

10. Manic pixie dream girl: This phrase, coined relatively recently, refers to the offbeat and seemingly off-her-rocker character who upends the protagonist’s carefully ordered world. The problem? She’s done and overdone — at least in films. For the stereotype to not be stale, there has to be more to her than quirk. Why is she such a goofball?

11. Nerd: Geek, dork, nimrod — been there, done that. But, for example, in the brilliant film Brick (film noir meets adolescent angst), the school brain is not an object of scorn but an awkward, laconic human database for the teenage gumshoe — and there’s a touch of empathy for him in the way the lead character keeps him at arm’s length. What makes a nerd a nerd? And what makes him (or her) interesting? Hints of depth, or of deviousness, or both.

12. Sidekick: The protagonist’s right-hand man or woman serves as a counterpoint: intrepid vs. timid, serious vs. silly, and so on, one way or the other. Make sure your lead character’s attendant complements him or her, but also keep their relationship fresh by introducing some vulnerability in the main character the subordinate can exploit.

13. Tomboy: The tomboy transformed is a tired trope, not much better than the mousy maiden who becomes a blithe beauty just by taking off her eyeglasses. Resist the urge to go the Cinderella route: If an androgynous or athletic woman or girl refuses to conform to societal standards for feminine appearance, go with it. But why does she rebel against such norms? That’s the key to her character.

14. Tortured artist: In literature as in real life, complicated creative types are tiresome. A broadly comic tortured artist may be an effective device, but the writer must handle this type with care.

15. Wise man: The scholarly mentor is a time-tested element of many classic stories (think Merlin, or Yoda), so any such character must possess distinct traits. Perhaps your story’s wise man is brilliant about some things but inept concerning others — he needs his protégé’s help in affairs of the heart, or, like the absent-minded professor, with whom he shares some characteristics, is a sage when it comes to intellectual areas but is at a loss when it comes to practical matters.

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A stock character is a stereotypical fictional character in a work of art such as a novel, play, film, or a movie whom audiences recognize from frequent recurrences in a particular literary tradition. Stock characters are archetypal characters distinguished by their flatness. As a result, they tend to be easy targets for parody and to be criticized as clichés. The presence of a particular array of stock characters is a key component of many genres. The point of the stock character is to move the story along by allowing the audience to already understand the character.^[1][2]Full hd hindi song download.

• 1Examples and history
  • 1.1Ancient Greece
  • 1.2Roman input

Examples and history[edit]

Ancient Greece[edit]

The study of the Character, as it is now known, was conceived by Aristotle's student Theophrastus. In The Characters (c. 319 BC), Theophrastus introduced the 'character sketch', which became the core of 'the Character as a genre'. It included 30 character types. Each type is said to be an illustration of an individual who represents a group, characterized by his most prominent trait. The Theophrastan types are as follows:

It is unclear from where Theophrastus derived these types, but many strongly resemble those from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Despite the fact that Theophrastus sought to portray character types and not individuals, some of the sketches may have been drawn from observations of actual persons in Athenian public life. Although the preface of the work implies the intention to catalogue 'human nature, associate[ed] with all sorts and conditions of men and contrast[ed] in minute detail the good and bad among them', many other possible types are left unrepresented. These omissions are especially noticeable because each of the thirty characters represents a negative trait ('the bad'); some scholars have therefore suspected that another half of the work, covering the positive types ('the good'), once existed.^{[citation needed]} This preface, however, is certainly fictitious, i.e. added in later times, and cannot therefore be a source of any allegation.^{[citation needed]} Nowadays many scholars also believe that the definitions found in the beginning of each sketch are later additions.^{[citation needed]}

New Comedy[edit]

New Comedy was the first theatrical form to have access to Theophrastus' Characters. Menander was said to be a student of Theophrastus, and has been remembered for his prototypical cooks, merchants, farmers and slave characters. Although we have few extant works of the New Comedy, the titles of Menander's plays alone have a 'Theophrastan ring': The Fisherman, The Farmer, The Superstitious Man, The Peevish Man, The Promiser, The Heiress, The Priestess, The False Accuser, The Misogynist, The Hated Man, The Shipmaster, The Slave, The Concubine, The Soldiers, The Widow, and The Noise-Shy Man.

Mimistry[edit]

Another early form that illustrates the beginnings of the Character is the mime. Greco-Roman mimic playlets often told the stock story of the fat, stupid husband who returned home to find his wife in bed with a lover, stock characters in themselves. Although the mimes were not confined to playing stock characters, the mimus calvus was an early reappearing character. Mimus calvus resembled Maccus, the buffoon from the Atellan Farce. The Atellan Farce is highly significant in the study of the Character because it contained the first true stock characters.^{[citation needed]} The Atellan Farce employed four fool types. In addition to Maccus, Bucco, the glutton, Pappus, the naïve old man (the fool victim), and Dossennus, the cunning hunchback (the trickster). A fifth type, in the form of the additional character Manducus, the chattering jawed pimp, also may have appeared in the Atellan Farce, possibly out of an adaptation of Dossennus. The Roman mime, as well, was a stock fool, closely related to the Atellan fools.

Roman input[edit]

Plautus[edit]

The Roman playwright Plautus drew from Atellan Farce as well as the Greek Old and New Comedy. He expanded the four types of Atellan Farce to eight (not quite as distinct as the farcical types):

• Old man, probably a miser – senex iratus
• Young man in love, possibly the miser's son, who rebels against authority – adulescens amator
• Clever or cunning slave – servus callidus
• Stupid slave – servus stultus
• Hanger-on (parasite) or flatterer – parasitus
• Courtesan – meretrix
• Slave dealer or pimp – leno
• Braggartsoldier – Miles Gloriosus note; Swaggering Soldier

Plautus's fool was either the slave or the parasite.

Laërtius[edit]

In revision of Theophrastus, Diogenes Laërtius published Ethical Characters (Circa 230 BC), sparking interest in two lines of study.

The first is that of the character book. Imitators of Theophrastus including Satyrus Atheneus, Heracleides Ponticus, Lycon, and Rutilius Lupus wrote their own character sketches. Circa 212 BC, Ariston's discourse on morality included several proud Character types and mimicked the Theophrastan style. Following Philodemus of Gadara's work on 'Self seeking Affability' and Ariston's characters, evidence of acquaintance with the genre is present, however popularity of the portrait over the generalized stock figures in increasing. This may explain the gap of time from the beginning of the Common Era to the 16th century marked by an absence of character sketching.

The second field is the study of nomenclature. As the Character rose as a literary genre, many terms were coined in attempt to place labels on the new subject. The translation Theophrastus' title is based on the terms charassein and Charakter, associated with the stamping of an impression. Rhetorica ad Herennium (c. 20 BC), attributed to Cicero, split the character up into two qualities: effictio, the description of physical appearance, and notation, the nature of man. Later in his De Inventione, Cicero divided the character, or conformation as he called it, into eleven points: name, nature (natura), way of life (victus), fortune (fortuna), physical appearance (habitus), passions (affectio), interests (studium), reasons for doing things (consilium), one's deeds (factum), what happens to one (casus), one's discourses (orationes). Seneca, too, played a part in providing labels for the new genre in his Epistulae Morale, using the terms ethologia and characterismos for characteristic conduct of moral types. Circa 93 AD, Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria discussed the effect of personality on rhetoric and in so doing, coined the terms ethopoeia, an orator's imitation of another person's character or habits, and prosopopoeia, the same thing, but with a dramatization of the person as well as the giving of his words. Other terms conceived in the period include figurae sententiarum and descriptio personae. Decorum, the rhetorical principle that an individual's words and subject matter are appropriately matched, also became a relevant term, and would remain significant into the Renaissance.

Supersession by philosophy[edit]

The Romans' 'perverse admiration for decorum'^{[This quote needs a citation]} is in part responsible for the deterioration and the resulting blackout period of the Character genre. During this blackout, the Character smoldered under the philosophies of such men as Horace. In the Ars Poetica (c. 18 BC), Horace drew pictures of typical men at various ages, from childhood to old age. Horace's belief that 'what is typical of a class should be observable in the individual' was illustrated in his epistles classifying Achilles as a man of rage and love, Paris an impractical lover, and Ulysses the model of virtue and wisdom. Others, such as Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Priscian, shared this belief and sought to explore the workings of human nature.

Other countries[edit]

Stock characters also feature heavily in the comic traditions of Kyōgen in Japan and Commedia dell'arte in Italy; in the latter they are known as tipi fissi (fixed [human] types).

Com Media Dell'arte Stock Characters

Academic analysis[edit]

According to Dwight V. Swain, a creative writing professor and prolific fiction author, all characters begin as stock characters and are fleshed out only as far as needed to advance the plot. ^[3]

According to E. Graham McKinley, 'there is general agreement on the importance to drama of 'stock' characters. This notion has been considerably explored in film theory, where feminists have argued, female stock characters are only stereotypes (child/woman, whore, bitch, wife, mother, secretary or girl Friday, career women, vamp, etc.).'^[4] Thus, the subject of female stock characters has attracted scholarly attention as seen in the work of Ulrike Roesler and Jayandra Soni whose work deals 'not only with female stock characters in the sense of typical roles in the dramas, but also with other female persons in the area of the theatrical stage..'^[5]

Andrew Griffin, Helen Ostovich, and Holger Schott Syme explain further that 'Female stock characters also permit a close level of audience identification; this is true most of all in The Troublesome Raign, where the 'weeping woman' type is used to dramatic advantage. This stock character provides pathos as yet another counterpoint to the plays' comic business and royal pomp.'^[6]

Tara Brabazon discusses how the 'school ma'am on the colonial frontier has been a stock character of literature and film in Australia and the United States. She is an ideal foil for the ill mannered, uncivilised hero. In American literature and film, the spinster from East – generally Boston – has some stock attributes. Polly Welts Kaufman shows that 'her genteel poverty, unbending morality, education, and independent ways make her character a useful foil for the two other female stock characters in Western literature: the prostitute with the heart of gold and the long-suffering farmer's wife.'^[7]

Copyright law[edit]

In the United States, courts have determined that copyright protection cannot be extended to the characteristics of stock characters in a story, whether it be a book, play, or film.^[8]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Chris Baldick (2008). 'stock character'. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press. p. 317. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
2. ^Kamesha Jackson (2010). 'stock character'. In Ronald L. Jackson II (ed.). Encyclopedia of Identity. Sage Publications. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
3. ^Swain, Dwight V. Creating Characters: How to Build Story People Writers Digest Books, 1990
4. ^E. Graham McKinley, Beverly Hills, 90210: television, gender, and identity (1997), 19.
5. ^Ulrike Roesler and Jayandra Soni, Aspects of the female in Indian culture: proceedings of the symposium in .. (2004), 119.
6. ^Andrew Griffin, Helen Ostovich, and Holger Schott Syme, Locating the Queen's Men, 1583-1603: Material Practices and Conditions of .. (2009), 172.
7. ^Tara Brabazon, Ladies who lunge: celebrating difficult women (2002), 147.
8. ^Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930).