Home a Round Character Has Multiple Dimensions

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A round character has multiple dimensions as a human being, and strikes more than one 'note' in the text -- for instance, the snobbish Mrs. Elton of Emma is a one-dimensional presence in that novel, while Hardy's Bathsheba is contradictory as a real human being, and one cannot predict her likely actions.

Retrospective narration is narrated from the point-of-view of a present day narrator, looking into the far-off past of a long-ago world, like Hardy's third person omniscient narrator of Far from the Madding Crowd, or a narrator looking back on his own life, like Dickens' David Copperfield.

Didactic literature teaches an explicit lesson of how one ought to behave, like Jane Austen's Emma, or how human life evolves in strange ways in the point-of-view of the narrator, as in Joseph Andrews by Fielding.

A novel of manners is plot-driven in terms of questions about how its characters should or do behave in society, and the conflicts that result between the individual in conflict with societal mores, such as Austen's Emma or the questions of the excruciatingly correct, nameless governess of Turn of the Screw.

Omniscience on the part of a narrator means that the novel's narrator knows all, not only what will happen by even the character's motivations, such as Fielding and Austen.

Section II

Part 1

Thomas Hardy alludes to, with the word, nebula, the effects of science and religion in the life of his characters -- like Bathsheba's motivations, a nebula is a bright and mysterious astral phenomenon, but unknown to the participants.

DH Lawrence calls one of his characters John Thomas because of the sexual connotations of this name -- it is slang for the male 'member' in Great Britain.

Part 2

Quote a.

The sexual connotations given to a normally fight between men mark this as DH Lawrence's Freudian style.

Quote b.

Penelope Lively is the only author listed who was writing during the age of television.

Quote c.

Henry James' ornate diction and use of the ghostly and ghastly marks this as from Turn of the Screw.

Quote d.

Fielding's send-up of intellectual pretension marks this from Joseph Andrews.

Quote e.

The first person narrator and charm of childhood makes this evidently Dickens' David Copperfield.