Autolitic, amfilitic și heterolitic: o tipologie a personajului literar bazată pe orientarea efectelor comportamentale în romanul românesc interbelic
Daniel Coman
Descriere autor:
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
E-mail:
E-mail personal autor:
danielemil.coman@ulbsibiu.ro
5
Rubrica:
Studii literare
Autolytic, Amphilytic, and Heterolytic: A Typology of Literary Characters Based on the Orientation of Behavioral Effects in the Romanian Interwar Novel
Abstract: This article proposes a new typology of literary character based on the direction of the effects that characters’ cognitive patterns and behavior generate within the fictional world. Drawing on cognitive narratology, particularly the concept of mind style, and on the cognitive model of personality disorders developed in the DSM-5 and Aaron T. Beck’s cognitive therapy, the study examines ten representative Romanian interwar novels. Rather than classifying characters according to moral, aesthetic, or diagnostic criteria, it groups them according to the orientation of the psychological and behavioral effects they produce within the intradiegetic world. Three categories emerge: autolytic characters, whose maladaptive cognitive patterns primarily result in self-destructive outcomes; amphilytic characters, whose actions are simultaneously destructive to themselves and to others; and heterolytic characters, whose destructive effects are directed predominantly towards others and are frequently legitimized through ideological, moral, or pseudo-theoretical rationalizations. By identifying shared cognitive and behavioral configurations across characters that have traditionally been treated as unrelated, the proposed typology offers a transferable analytical framework for the comparative study of literary characters beyond the Romanian interwar novel.
Keywords: cognitive narratology, literary character, mind style, psychological deviance, Romanian interwar novel
Acknowledgement: This work was funded by the EU’s NextGenerationEU instrument through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan of Romania – Pillar III-C9-I8, managed by the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization, within the project entitled Theorizing (Sub)peripheries: Strategies of Synchronization in Southeast European Literary and Cultural Criticism (STRASYN), contract no. 760247/28.12.2023, code CF 141/31.07.2023.
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