Character in English Literature.

Description: Traces the development of characterization in representative works of English literature from the Middle Ages to Joyce and Lawrence, emphasizing the change from universalized figures to individual psychology. Includes a chapter entitled "Women by Chaucer: The Wife of Bath, Criseyde" (pp. 41-55) that describes their characters and observes their similarities and differences as "two versions of Every-woman," alike in their widowhood, independence, guile, needfulness, moral ambiguities, and capriciousness, even though the Wife as a "parody" of several virtues is "more dangerous" and Criseyde, circumscribed by betrayals, "more vulnerable."