Character: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies (TRIOS) - Softcover

Amanda Anderson is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English and director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University.
Rita Felski is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at the University of Virginia and Niels Bohr Professor at the University of Southern Denmark.
Toril Moi is the James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies, and professor of English, Philosophy, and Theatre Studies, at Duke University.

“This trio of essays—punchy, polemical, and shrewd—refreshes literary studies by revealing the value of once tabooed character talk and persuading us to own up at long last to our multiple investments in character. Anderson, Felski, and Moi help us better understand the characters of fiction, both as objects of identification and as models of moral vision.” (Deidre Shauna Lynch, Harvard University)

“This lively, timely, and thought-provoking volume gives three major critics room to explore what draws us to fictional beings. Genealogizing the formalist roots of literary critics’ abandonment of character, Anderson, Felski, and Moi make a vivid and persuasive case for characters’ distinct, fascinatingly intensified form of life.” (Jennifer L. Fleissner, Indiana University)

“Character seeks to revive the full complexity and richness of our experience of fictional characters. Anderson, Felski, and Moi break with critical orthodoxies, offering a lucid and sophisticated account of the force of readerly engagement with character life. These insights into the aesthetic and ethical centrality of character will provoke debate for years to come.” (Yi-Ping Ong, Johns Hopkins University)

"Three internationally famous literary scholars have turned revolutionary generals with a book that everyone working as, or learning to be, a literary critic should read. . . . Moi, Felski and Anderson are more like gardeners, cultivating the beds, rooting up the bindweed of false dogma and making our little lot – literary criticism – more appealing. The different critical virtues so strikingly exemplified in each essay (Moi’s attentive argument, Felski’s wide-ranging analysis, Anderson’s insightful readings), the absolutely lucid prose (rightly, a stylistic rebuke to professional argot and inaccessible theory-speak) and the clear-eyed overview of critical debates mean this book is perfect for present and future gardeners. It could and should be read by all critics and students." (Times Higher Education)