Copyright
Jens Eder;Published On
2025-07-29ISBN
Language
- English
Print Length
874 pages (xxxii+842)Dimensions
Weight
Media
Funding
- Brandenburger Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur
- Programme: Publication Fund for Open Access Monographs of the State of Brandenburg
OCLC Number
1529965673LCCN
2025465559THEMA
- JHBC
- ATFN
- ATFA
BIC
- AP
- APFA
- APFD
BISAC
- SOC024000
- PER004060
- PER004030
LCC
- PN1995.9.C36
Keywords
- Character Theory
- Film and Photography
- Film Analysis
- Media Characters
- Psychological Representation
- Cultural Symbols
- Emotional Responses
Characters in Film and Other Media
Theory, Analysis, Interpretation
- Jens Eder (author, translator)
- Stephen Lowry (translator)
Characters are central to the creation and experience of films and other media. Their cultural significance is profound, but they also raise a wide range of questions.
This book provides a comprehensive theory that guides the analysis and interpretation of characters across four dimensions: as represented beings with physical, psychological, and social characteristics; as artefacts with aesthetic structures; as meaningful symbols; and as symptoms of socio-cultural origins and effects. Integrating insights from film, media, and literary studies as well as philosophy, psychology and sociology, the book offers a broad range of approaches for understanding characters and the emotional responses they evoke.
Richly illustrated and offering practical tools, along with case studies of numerous characters from different genres of films, this book will be invaluable to scholars and students of film and media studies and related disciplines, as well as artistic practitioners.
Endorsements
I know of nothing even approaching the scope, detail, and rigor of Jens Eder’s magisterial study of character. Its publication in a complete translation finally makes this foundational work available to English-language readers, thereby allowing it to have the impact it merits—alongside works by authors from Aristotle to E. M. Forster and Northrop Frye (or even above the works of these authors, none of whom devoted such learned and plenary attention to character). Eder’s book is not only erudite and theoretically astute but deeply illuminating in its interpretations. Moreover, such theoretical insights as his discrimination of four levels of character analysis are developed with such lucidity that I suspect most readers will find their own analyses of character have gained greatly in insight, simply because they have engaged with Eder’s book.
Patrick Colm Hogan
Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut
Reviews
Film Book of the Month ... We are dealing here with a fundamental work.
Hans Helmut Prinzler
Deutsche Kinemathek,,
Additional Resources
Contents
Introduction
(pp. 1–22)- Jens Eder
Research on Characters: An Overview (T)
(pp. 25–50)- Jens Eder
- Jens Eder
A Basic Model for Analysis: The Character Clock
(pp. 117–148)- Jens Eder
- Jens Eder
Analysing Represented Beings: An Anthropological Heuristic
(pp. 211–288)- Jens Eder
- Jens Eder
Characters as Artefacts: Aesthetic Qualities and Conventions
(pp. 337–386)- Jens Eder
Motivation and Plot: Characters’ Needs, Goals, and Actions
(pp. 391–426)- Jens Eder
Character Constellations as Social and Aesthetic Systems
(pp. 427–476)- Jens Eder
- Jens Eder
Characters as Symptoms: How Characters Interact with Reality
(pp. 501–530)- Jens Eder
Imaginative Involvement with Characters: A Matter of Perspective
(pp. 535–608)- Jens Eder
- Jens Eder
Summary: Fundamentals of Character Theory and Analysis
(pp. 671–700)- Jens Eder
- Jens Eder
Contributors
Jens Eder
(author, translator)Jens Eder is Professor of Dramaturgy and Aesthetics at Film University Babelsberg in Potsdam, Germany. His research focuses on the intersections of audiovisual media, narrative, and society. He has published books and articles on narrative theory, characters, emotions, political documentaries, video activism on social media, and image operations in societal conflicts. Currently he is heading the research group ‘Film as a Catalyst of Social Transformation’, which investigates the impact of engaged films.