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A character (or fictional character) is a person in a narrative work of art (such as a novel, play, television series or film).〔Baldick (2001, 37) and Childs and Fowler (2006, 23). See also "character, 10b" in Trumble and Stevenson (2003, 381): "A person portrayed in a novel, a drama, etc; a part played by an actor".〕 Derived from the ancient Greek word χαρακτήρ, the English word dates from the Restoration,〔''OED'' "character" sense 17.a citing, ''inter alia'', Dryden's 1679 preface to ''Troilus and Cressida'': "The chief character or Hero in a Tragedy ... ought in prudence to be such a man, who has so much more in him of Virtue than of Vice... If Creon had been the chief character in ''Œdipus''..."〕 although it became widely used after its appearance in ''Tom Jones'' in 1749.〔Aston and Savona (1991, 34), quotation: 〕〔 From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor" developed.〔Harrison (1998, 51-2) quotation: 〕 Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theatre or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person."〔Pavis (1998, 47).〕 In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes. Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an actor.〔 Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practiced by actors Oromo andDaniel characterisation.〔 A character who stands as a representative of a particular class or group of people is known as a type.〔Baldick (2001, 265).〕 Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualised.〔 The characters in Henrik Ibsen's ''Hedda Gabler'' (1891) and August Strindberg's ''Miss Julie'' (1888), for example, are representative of specific positions in the social relations of class and gender, such that the conflicts between the characters reveal ideological conflicts.〔Aston and Savona (1991, 35).〕 The study of a character requires an analysis of its relations with all of the other characters in the work.〔Aston and Savona (1991, 41).〕 The individual status of a character is defined through the network of oppositions (proairetic, pragmatic, linguistic, proxemic) that it forms with the other characters.〔Elam (2002, 133).〕 The relation between characters and the action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas about human individuality, self-determination, and the social order.〔Childs and Fowler (2006, 23).〕 ==Classical analysis of character== In the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory, ''Poetics'' (c. 335 BCE), the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle deduces that character (''ethos'') is one of six qualitative parts of Athenian tragedy and one of the three objects that it represents (1450a12).〔Janko (1987, 8).〕 He understands character not to denote a fictional person, but rather the quality of the person acting in the story and reacting to its situations (1450a5).〔Janko (1987, 9, 84).〕 Aristotle defines character as "that which reveals decision, of whatever sort" (1450b8).〔 To Aristotle, "()ithout action a tragedy cannot exist, but without characters it may. For the tragedies of most recent () lack character, and in general there are many such poets" (1450a24-25).〔Janko (1987, 9, 86).〕 Aristotle argues for the primacy of plot (''mythos'') over character (1450a15-23):〔 But the most important of these is the structure of the incidents. For (i) tragedy is a representation not of human beings but of action and life. Happiness and unhappiness lie in action, and the end (life ) is a sort of action, not a quality; people are of a certain sort according to their characters, but happy or the opposite according to their actions. So (actors ) do not act in order to represent the characters, but they include the characters for the sake of their actions. Aristotle introduced the tripartite division of characters as superior to the audience, inferior, or at the same level. ''Tractatus coislinianus'' similarly defined three character types in Ancient Greek comedy: buffoon (''bômolochus''), ironist (''eirôn''), and imposter or boaster (''alazôn'').〔Carlson (1993, 23) and Janko (1987, 45, 170).〕 All three are central to Aristophanes' Old Comedy.〔Janko (1987, 170).〕 When the Roman Plautus wrote his plays two centuries later, using characters to define dramatic genres was well established.〔Carlson (1993, 22).〕 His ''Amphitryon'' begins with a prologue in which Mercury claims that since the play contains kings and gods, it cannot be a comedy and must be a tragicomedy.〔''Amphritruo'', line 59.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Character (arts)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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