Flat Protagonists: A Theory of Novel Character

We’ve all encountered protagonists who, over the course of the novel, turn out to be more complicated than we thought at first. But what does one do with a major character who simplifies as a novel progresses, to the point where even this novel’s other characters begin to disregard him? Flat Protaganists shows that writers have undertaken such formal experiments – which give rise to its titular “flat protagonists” – since the novel’s incipience. It finds such characters in British and French novels ranging from the late-seventeenth to the early-twentieth century by Aphra Behn, Isabelle de Charrière, Fraçoise de Graffigny, Thomas Hardy and Marcel Proust.