Today we are going to talk about one of the first studies of human behavior. The book is called the Characters and its author, Theophrastus, is a true scholar, and he continued Aristotle’s work in some ways. This book tries to divide and categorize human nature and behavior, or as Wikipedia says:
“The work contains thirty brief, vigorous and trenchant outlines of moral types, which form a most valuable picture of the life of his time, and in fact of human nature in general. They are the first recorded attempt at systematic character writing. The book has been regarded by some as an independent work; others incline to the view that the sketches were written from time to time by Theophrastus, and collected and edited after his death; others, again, regard the Characters as part of a larger systematic work, but the style of the book is against this. Theophrastus has found many imitators in this kind of writing, notably Joseph Hall (1608), Sir Thomas Overbury (1614–16), Bishop Earle (1628) and Jean de La Bruyère (1688), who also translated the Characters. George Eliot also took inspiration from Theophrastus’ Characters, most notably in her book of caricatures, Impressions of Theophrastus. Writing the “character sketch” as a scholastic exercise also originated in Theophrastus’s typology.”
The aspect that I find astonishing is the fact that there is only one female character in this book, and the fact that he is writing years before Freud, that cheapskates poo like goats. Here is one of his portraits:
The Coward
by Theophrastus
“Cowardice would seem to be, in fact, a shrinking of the soul through fear.
The Coward is one who, on a voyage, will protest that the promontories are privateers; and, if a high sea gets up, will ask if there is anyone on board who has not been initiated. He will put up his head and ask the steersman if he is halfway, and what he thinks of the face of the heavens; remarking to the person sitting next him that a certain dream makes him feel uneasy; and he will take off his tunic and give it to his slave; or he will beg them to put him ashore.
On land also, when he is campaigning, he will call to him those who are going out to the rescue, and bid them come and stand by him and look about them first; saying that it is hard to make out which is the enemy. Hearing shouts and seeing men falling, he will remark to those who stand by him that he has forgotten in his haste to bring his sword, and will run to the tent; where, having sent his slave out to reconnoiter the position of the enemy, he will hide the sword under his pillow; and then spend a long time in pretending to look for it. And seeing from the tent a wounded comrade being carried in, he will run towards him and cry “Cheer up!” He will take him into his arms and carry him; he will tend and sponge him; he will sit by him and keep the flies off his wound – in short he will do anything rather than fight with the enemy. Again, when the trumpeter has sounded the signal for battle, he will cry, as he sits in the tent, “Bother! You will not allow the man to get a wink of sleep with your perpetual bugling!” Then, covered with blood from the other’s wound, he will meet those who are returning from the fight, and announce to them, “I have run some risk to save one of 25 our fellows”; and he will bring in the men of his parish and of his tribe to see his patient, at the same time explaining to each of them that he carried him with his own hands to the tent.”
Kane and Peters, in their remarkable book Writing Prose (1958, 1964), mention that Theophrastus combines definition, description and narration and that the good writer should learn to distinguish between them. This is because they are not always combined. I think that Theophrastus’s stereotypes come from his life experience and if he wrote them as an art form they would have been more exacted, because life is the biggest test and not some fake laboratory.
Today’s task is to create this sort of profile of a character or a type you know, and the best will be published here on a special corner.
Yours,
Yoav
