4 - Character Psychology and Mental Attribution

Summary

Literature is written by, for and about people. (Bal, 1985:80)

Introduction

In the preceding chapters we were occupied with clear and fairly “small-scale” dispositions of the spectator (deictic gaze and personal space). These were intimately related to bodies and physical behavior. We now turn to a more general set of dispositions; namely, how people know or infer what others think or feel. This ability is much more “cognitive” and knowledge based than the two dispositions already discussed, involving sophisticated forms of reasoning. Eventually, it all comes down to characters and the strategies and competencies used by spectators to understand and make sense of the characters' screen behavior.

Characters have central functions in most narratives. In contrast to other modes of discourse, narratives focus on anthropomorphic creatures. In narratives, as in scientific descriptions of solar systems and molecules, events take place in a rule-based fashion. Unlike scientific descriptions, however, narrative occurrences have some form of human significance. They involve humanlike entities who act within and react to a social and physical environment. In fact, it seems that spectators' “‘entry into’ narrative structures are mediated by characters” (Smith,1995:18). In this respect, characters (in the broadest sense) should occupy a central position not only in a theory of narrative texts (narratology), but also in a theory of the reception and understanding of narrative texts.

To put the present project in perspective, it is important to outline dominant approaches to characters within literature and cinema studies.