flat and round character

ARTICLE

from the

Encyclopædia Britannica

characters as described by the course of their development in a work of literature. Flat characters are two-dimensional in that they are relatively uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work. By contrast, roundcharacters are complex and undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader.

The two types are described by E.M. Forster in his book Aspects of the Novel (1927). The example he gives of a flat character is Charles Dickens’s Mrs. Micawber, of a round character William Thackeray’s Becky Sharp.

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