Mieke Bal summarizing the exposition of the nature of character as viewed by narratology:
Repetition, accumulation, relations to other characters, and transformations are four different principles that work together to construct the image of a character. Their effect can only be described, however, when the outline of the character has been roughly filled in. This is a constant element in narratological analysis: a dialectic back-and-forth between speculation and verification through open-minded analysis.
from Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 4th edition, page 114.
The passage and its keyword “dialectic” popped out at me when I recalled José Angel García Landa’s remarks about the relation between noesis and poesis.
On the process of reading characters and ‘structuring’ them as you read on and as they keep evolving, I love, too, Philippe Hamon’s paper “Pour un statut sémiologique du personnage” (1977).
Interesting that Hamon crops up in this context. Mieke Bal goes on later in the book to acknowledge Hamon:
quote>
An important book article by Hamon [Le personnel du roman] (1983), from which I have borrowed a great deal in this chapter, deals with characters. Hamon treats the most important aspects of the characters and places them in a semiotic framework. His division of the characters into signifier and signified I find a bit problematic.
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She doesn't elaborate. And so a rabbit hole opens…