A character’s mode of presentation can itself encode meaning beyond content

Evidence

For Benjamin, however, this is not so much a flaw or an inconsistency, as a clue: Ottilie is not reality but appearance, and it is this that the rather external and visual mode of characterization conveys. “It is clear that these Goethean characters come before us not so much as figures shaped from external models, nor wholly imaginary in their invention, but rather entranced somehow, as though under a spell. Hence a kind of obscurity about them which is foreign to purely visual images and which is comprehensible only for the reader who grasps their essence as pure appearance. For appearance is in this work not so much presented as a theme as it is rather implicit in the very nature and mode of the presentation itself.” — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 150

Categorization

• XREF: Benjamin’s move — treatment as clue rather than flaw, meaning implicit in the mode of presentation — prefigures Jameson’s later insistence on form as the bearer of ideology. — connects to: A writer can render another’s character through the physical rhythm of their actions — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 58; Understatement can communicate more powerfully than exhaustive description — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 373

Broader Connections

• A writer can render another’s character through the physical rhythm of their actions #exemplifies (0.85) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 58