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0:00
hello my bookish friends out there in booktube land and welcome to another episode of Tristan and the classics in this episode we're taking a look at how to understand literature more fully um specifically focusing on just one aspect of creating characters and that is the humors have you ever heard of the humors before so without further Ado let's get stuck in shall we just to say before we start if you've wondered where I've been for the past four months in the last
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video before this one um I give a few minutes a five minute update on what's been happening in my life and why I've vanished so if you're curious go and watch that so let's get into this topic of the humors do you know what humors are you may immediately think of the medieval humors linked to Medieval medicine so phlegm by all color and sanguine where you've got to have this balance of
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humors in your body otherwise you get ill that's not what we're talking about in literature human in literature as we're talking about come from sort of Ben Johnson's time so contemporary of Shakespeare called The Comedy of humors it's it's known as new comedy now before we build up exactly what a humor is um I'll just share with you the idea of new comedy so in new comedy you have around the heroine or the hero you have a clash of two aspects of societies
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two groups you have What's called the congenial group and you have the obstructive group or the obstructing group The congenial as the name gives away they're happy they're open they're friendly they're welcoming they're tolerant the obstructive group are those who are dogmatic bombastic fixed in their ways and they hold to a particular standard which they absolutely think is right and they are aligned against the progress of the hero or the heroine whereas the congenial group
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they're the ones that are supportive of the Heron heroine and to construct these groups what you have are humors and that is a character that is built solely around one attribute one quality not a physical attribute equality and what that does is it brings a particular disposition a particular way of thinking into high relief and this is fantastic for satire you can you can sort of satire if you think it's satire you can think of it sort of being like a cartoon of real life
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but it's not as primitive as a cartoon so Swift and fielding and Richardson you know these these could write great satire now I'll give you an example of how they do this with the humors Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice she writes the character of Mrs Bennett so Elizabeth's mum now she's a hypochondriac and she's a pretty 2D character even though she's quite entertaining to read Because her whole life is built around hypochondria whenever something goes wrong what
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does she say oh my nerves my nerves whatever is to become of us or Mr Bennett you have no consideration for my poor nerves she always is giving in to that emotion and when things go right she's really often away with the fairies you know thinking everything is wonderful she is really committed to excessive emotion and what that does for Austin is it helps her ridicule a particular aspect of her Society particularly the parental age because they come
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from the late 18th century and back in the 18th century the Romantic Period is at its height Romanticism and that caused people to give in to their emotions the more you can express how you felt the more sophisticated you were to the point that people would I'm talking like full-grown men bursting into tears at the site of a forget-me-not okay which is a bit excessive so that was sentimentality or sensibility and it's what's being critiqued in the book
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Sense and Sensibility okay now that's brought about by having a humor this one character who is built around a particular trait Austin doesn't make all of her characters humors
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um but there is one writer who particularly particularly uses humors better than anyone else in my opinion and that is Charles Dickens so for the majority of this video we're going to be referring to Charles Dickens characters because they they are probably the best example of it so let's just set up what happens when you're using humors as your main focus in a book based I think we've just mentioned we've got a congenial society and we have an obstructing
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Society in new comedy which is where you use the comedy of humors the congenial Society supports the heroine or the hero they are congenial so they are welcoming tolerant open happy all that kind of stuff then you have the other aspect of the world which is the obstructing Society so they block the heroine or the heroes progress they block if you can hear creaking by the way old floorboards uh in
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the house so my wife's above me right now I don't know what she's doing jumping on the bed perhaps we're all children at heart um so the obstructing Society they don't want Society to change so they block anything which is out of the ordinary for them and a new comedy always resolves in an improvement of society at the end but and it also involves the Improvement of their heroine or the people whom the heroin interacts with to get such a Clash the writers will often use humors
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to typify the certain positions of characters and in the obstructing Society they are they are very deliberate so let's think of a couple of humors if I were to say Miser to you who is a miser if you were going to give a nickname to someone who was miserly what would you call them think of Charles Dickens think of Christmas Scrooge Scrooge is a humor he's built around miserliness everything about him is miserly okay until towards the end we get a changing of the masks
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um other characters Miss havisham in Great Expectations there she is in her wedding dress everything about her is Frozen in time she is epitomized around revenge and a clinging sort of a harboring of resentment is what she is she cannot let go of things so everything about her is built around that and it actually makes for a very Vivid character it doesn't necessarily make for a rounded character but Vivid they stand off the page to us and we can see what they stand for
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and what's great about them is when you amplify a particular quality it's why with Dickens even though we sometimes call his characters grotesque or caricatures I use those phrases but it's not exactly right they are humors it's why you read Dickens and you can immediately recognize someone you know as being that person just because they may have a disposition to a certain way of acting
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or seeing the world and it's brought into High Relief by Dickens and he does that by removing the Nuance of that character and focusing in on one particular aspect of them and sort of making them embody it in total so um other characters that you would have um Uriah Heap Uriah Heap and David Copper Tree but I'm ever so unbought this oily snake-like scheming character in the background that is just faux humility and hypocrisy but he's obsequious isn't he yeah so obsequy is sort of
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what he is built around because it's obsequious in order to advance his own agenda to see how he becomes this humor okay a style a feeling an emotion that is embodied that's focused on it it's almost an obsessional point of focus then you've got somebody like Paul domby so Paul dunby is proud right at the beginning of donbinson you see him sat there with his newborn child um and he's saying zombie and Son rolling the words around because he loves his trade company
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that he's built the name of his family he thinks he's above everything and of course this follows you know he is a very implacable unbending character through the whole book He's a humor speaking of Don Williamson actually some good characters in that there is a character called kaka kaka is a humor as well he's sort of the real bad guy in the whole book because although he doesn't overtly do anything bad you know he is a machiavelle you know he is a schemer that
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is working for his own advance and so these are all humors a good humor would be Joe gargery Joe gargery is is built around kindness so he always supports pip he never loses his temper you know he's good to his wife Mrs Joe even though she's a complete Tyrant he's built around a particular humor and so what that does is it allows us when we're reading to see the contrast of society and
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ultimately what's got to happen in a new comedy where humans are used is the hero or heroine will not be a humor they have to be influenced by the things around them so they have to be flexible and you're going to see how they interact between the two societies but the comedy itself will always resolve in an improvement of society the obstructive Society will always lose so you always have a happy ending does it mean to say you can't have people die you can
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have main characters die in a humor but the overall effect is positive and it leads to an improvement of society as a whole and some kind of crumbling of the opposition and this is something I might bring out about writing the new comedies in humor it allows for sentimentalism
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um when we think of Dickens sometimes you can feel the emotion the the deliberate playing of emotion on the reader trying to manipulate them um to the point sometimes being a bit modeling you know over overly merch and I love Dickens but I'm happy to say that about some of his work
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so how do you actually create the humor what we've said we focus on one aspect of the personality so that's that is really the central part but what you have to do is you sort of have to put little flags up for the reader and there's a an aspect of creating humors which is called the tagged humor so something is tagged onto them which becomes symbolic of them which causes the reader's mind to Incline a certain way to perceive everything a certain way it's
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very clever actually how this is done now the tag can be it can be a characteristic a man a mannerism like grinding your hands together which would you know say a bit greedy or obsequious
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um normally though you have the verbal tag so it's something that a character keeps on saying so whenever they turn up they keep saying something for instance Joe gardery ever the best of friends pep ain't we ever the best of friends
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so he repeats this a number of times when things get a bit thick a bit you know dicey it shows us that in his mind he will never alter from a good standpoint and it brings out this quality of goodness is such stark contrast to the other characters who are in Pip's life that cause him to move away from Joe and of course the whole book resolves itself in in PIP understanding that a true gentleman true nobility comes from within not from the external but there's that verbal
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lick that he uses and he's not the only one so um John jaundice in Bleak House oh so how are you John always the the East wind is blowing the East wind is blowing the East Wind always means um an unfavorable wind things are bad but he's not a critical character he doesn't like things being disruptive and so he he has a phrase for them sort of he insinuates it he doesn't want to be negative so positivity is there and he's got this sort of verbal lick now you can also have physical
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characteristics or mannerisms which create the humors as well now one of them and I mentioned earlier is a good character you do not like him at all never do there's nothing to warm to him but he is a good character although he is two-dimensional okay he's not rounded like a lot of Dickens characters and we're going to mention why Dickens does that some people think it's because he lacks ability to write no you've got to understand the humors actually to understand Dickens
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so it's Kaka mentioned him before so karka is the main clerk for Paul dumby who owns this big merchantile emperor empire and all of the managing devolves upon him and he is a strong character he's hyper intellectual which is often you know the best bad guys are really smart you just feel dwarfed by their intellect in their presence but every time he comes in um or our main character has to deal with him or someone is dealing with him on behalf of the main character remember
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obstructing Society congenial they want to do something for the character obstructors don't
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Dickens always mentions kaka's teeth regularly and to the point that it actually becomes funny whenever he says it and he's got some turns of phrase which also make the expression of the teeth now Kaka is not snarling at people although you get the sense that he is but he's always smiling he has this complete composure of himself even though inside you know he's hating the person so he smiles and Dickens always mentions the number of teeth Kaka has
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so he's one of those with a broad smile like you can see all the ivories and what this does is it is a flag to tell us what Kaka stands for he's a threat you know teeth you don't think of teeth as the most friendly things it's carnivorous it's smiling growling biting vampiric no we're not best friends we're vampires so when he brings teeth up all the time he's flagging to us how to view Parker it's just a very clever touch you have other characters who you know like Miss
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havisham here's here's the the tag for her there's two tags for her her environment is the tag she never leaves satis house she always wears the wedding dress she only has one slipper on because when she was jilted at 9 20 in the morning of her wedding day she was putting on her shoes her slippers and she had one on and not the other and she freezes in time the wedding cake on the table
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the way it's all laid out for the banquet is a frozen in time this is the harboring of resentment we're told that she's locked up here she's wearing this worn out dress which is gone yellow with age everything is yellowing because of the harboring of resentment it's decaying the soul you see how we're tagged and she also says to Estella a number of times make him love you let him fall in love with you then break his heart yeah she's vengeful because of her resentment verbal tanks
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um another way you tag people and to turn them into humors remember with a specific point Dickens wants to and satirists in particular they want to give you a character that is so clear it's building the backdrop for you to clearly see the dilemmas of the character and for you to make a moral judgment on the scene this is what the humans are so good for a moral judgment and what was Dickens more than anything else he was social justice wasn't he he tried to
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change things in the world so Oliver Twist for instance he wanted to improve things he hated what was known as the poor laws and the poor laws were like if you were poor you had to go to the workhouse and work but that mistreat that made the poor even worse off than they were before and you know he wrote a book to change that so he wants to bring everything into Stark relief to show Oliver
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Twist's plight and then the changing of society how it could be if you just let the the congenial group take charge and interestingly Mr Bumble who is the beetle of the workhouse a humor you know he there he is he's always sort of expansive in his in his look a bit rotten and he's got this phrase that he keeps using or at least it's a word he keeps using wishes or vicious the wish us poor so this condescending um view of the poor this vehement dislike of them yet he should be
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in their favor trying to help do you see how he's been brought into Stark relief and one of the ways that Dickens will do this is he ought to and others turn a character almost into an inanimate object so that they become part of the framework that it comes out of the scenery so that you can hold this up the obstructive society and and juxtapose it to the congenial which one is better everybody this allows for great sentimentality so turning people into
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inanimate objects Kaka teeth he turns him into a set of Dentures basically so you've just got this you don't really get a full idea of what Kaka looks like you imagine he's wearing black
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um being a clerk that helps but the only thing you see in your mind when you think Kaka is his teeth that's it you're focused on it's like a close shot from the camera and by turning him into something so inanimate it's easier to fixate a quality on him um other characters we mentioned you know um I was talking about going into inanimate objects I'm going to move on wemic we're making Great Expectations you know he's a lovely character
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um but he has a very rigid View and the way that Dickens does that obviously he paints a brilliant backstory you know when it tries to turn his house into a sort of faux Castle even though it's very small house because that's what he wants and he's always talking about portable furniture
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um in other words portable Goods that you can sell if you need to so that's his tag he just wants Financial Security he's not about being rich and then being content with those things but he's frequently referred to in in the sort of aspects that link to the clerk position that he has and post box like it talks about webmick having a post box mouth Square mouth okay um it has no great Charisma about him and so by turning him into this feature he's actually a
19:27
pleasant character but he's a very much a bit part player but he's building the congenial Society by just sticking him to the wall and that's something that pip can now interact with and move past that helps us contradistinct between the two sides of the new comedy and that's how the humors work so when you're reading a book if you come across somebody a character that is particularly not one
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dimensional Dickens does not write one-dimensional characters he writes two-dimensional characters
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um they've got color they do move and exist but sometimes they are deliberately written just to be not quite part of the scenery but to help contrast so if that's why you ever wonder why some of his characters seem unbelievable there is an element of belief about them because you recognize that quality but he's put them there deliberately because he wants to set the scene for you to make your judgment okay so I think of hard times if you've ever read hard times
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it's one of the few uh books that Dickens writes which is said outside of London it's actually in a fictional city called Coke town because he's having a go at the industrial Mill towns of the North and the horrible things that the the workers have to put up with and bound to be in grad grind they're not one-dimensional characters they move exist have a plot around them but they are fixated on a particular way of seeing things um and so boundary for instance is a utilitarian
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and everything has to be explained without emotion okay so a horse isn't some cute animal it's the one of the funniest openings is this little girl trying to define a horse in Bound of his school and he's like no it is a quadruped blah blah blah this that and the other it doesn't sound like a horse at all but he's been tagged there in his way of talking to make us see clearly this is utilitarianism look at the effect it has on just the joy of life and those beneath him
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okay something Dickens does better than everyone else in my opinion with the exception of Balzac is
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um he can turn institutions into humors he personifies an institution Chancery Court in Bleak House becomes a character you know right at the beginning in the first page it talks about fog 16 times fog is mentioned in the first page all linked to a journey towards Chancery Court fog is a tag for the place itself it is enshrouded and miasma comes up around it a poisonous Aura and it's it sucks people dry of their belongings to the point that you have if you've read the book
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crook has his his sort of pawn shop right near Chancery Lane where he sort of drags in all the goods that people have when they're on hard times and have to sell him it's it's no accident it's right next to Chancery Court because that's what they do whenever a case comes in the lawyers bleed the defendant dry of their money and so what Dickens is helping us with there by making the chance to record a humor itself and that's quite a skill is he's saying to people in society is this
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right what he actually does people did hate the Chancery Court back then he put He managed to put it vividly before them what they were thinking and they could say yes that's it and of course his book Bleak House actually helps lead to reforms of the Chancery Court so the humors are a phenomenal way of building an energetic momentum in your reader so if you're a writer and you want to critique a part of society consider making a character who embodies that one thing
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or the institution instead of developing the institution with various parts and departments and everything you know a lot of different interests focus it purely on one single negative or positive and you will get people reading and thinking oh I'm supposed to feel this way about this institution or this person and that's something to look out for in your own reading so if you're ever reading a book and you come across someone who seems to be obsessively stuck
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around one characteristic particularly if they're unchanging put a line from their name when you first meet them into the margin and right is this a humor through the rest of the book if they're in a humor they will not become the main player they can be significantly influential on the heroine or the hero but they're not the main player Heroes and heroines are never humors
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but you could spot that and if they never changed through the book this tells you something about the author and it's where you may have heard the phrase an unreliable author or a not trustworthy author there's this idea that authors should let you decide but if you find a humor in a book it gives you an inclination of what the author believes themselves what they want you to think the emotion they're trying to pull out of you just thinking at the minute in map
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in the patreon group we're just finishing off Ian Forster's A Room With a View and we're not having discussions over it we all read it individually and I come under the end and do a review of it um but there's a character in there called Miss Bartlett and she is so prim and proper she knows all the forms of etiquette and outward show of the early 20th century high class the irony being that she's not high class herself well she sort of is but she hasn't got much money
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um but she is a dogmatic in her way of seeing that the English way of doing things and the high society's way of doing things is the best and she can't bend from that now Fosters put that in this is not a book of humans it is not a new comedy necessarily
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um it's modernist um but he brings her in because it's so useful to typify the part of society and he is ridiculed him he's satirizing the rigid rigid forms that are expected of people which robs them of their Joy so I'm being told by Foster there he's helping me with a character to emotionally connect with the problem in society he's making something that sort of a theory or philosophical and is condensing it into something I can watch and behold and dislike and
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think oh they've got that wrong and then when that's juxtaposed with the congenial characters wow yes this is a much better way of doing things do you see how that works absolutely brilliant technique it's been used like I said then the Greeks did all this but Ben Johnson that time period of Shakespeare literature went through a dramatic shift and new ideas based on the Greeks were formed and obviously the novel eventually becomes the dominant piece of
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literature that comes out of all of that so those are the humors a humor is a character that is built obsessively around one emotional one quality of living they have a tag look out for tags if they always with the author always references something I will say always you know regularly comes to reference something to them um it might just be that they say random statements um Mrs Miss Bates in Emma from Jane Austen pork mother okay that statement is
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you know she just makes a comment she's always wittering about things she's very nervous she she typifies a certain kind of character and it just gives a bit of um it brings a bit of realism into the world but it's still comedic you know it contrasts as well the distinction between those who know how to behave and those who don't so that's what the humors are for and if you spot them why is it important because it adds to your enjoyment of the flavor of a book
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when you can go oh look at that that's a humor that's the author trying to tell me something
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um do I agree with it am I supposed to have a am I supposed to be making a moral distinction here
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um do I agree with it that allows you just to savor it even if you don't want to agree you've stepped off in one of my old videos I talk about most people when they read a book they're like on a train journey and the scenery Wiz is by and they say oh it's lovely but when you can see things like this you're stepping off the train you're no longer seeing the vast Panorama you're looking up at a piece of the architecture you know a bit of carving on a church or on a building or
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something as opposed to just the broad spectrum scene so I hope you've enjoyed this video a bit more in depth and um yeah tell me what you think in the comments below and if you want to know where I've been like I say just watch my last video because I explained what's happened to me and I'm really glad to be back I will try and be regular as I can um and now I get to say something I haven't said for a long time until the next time I wish you Joy in your reading
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