The Cast of Character: The Representation of Personality in Ancient and Medieval Literature

This book is concerned with the idea of character and the methods of representing it in ancient and medieval narrative fiction, and shows how late classical and medieval authors adopted techniques and perspectives from rhetoric, philosophy, and sometimes theology to fashion figures who define not only themselves but also their readers.

Ginsberg first tests Ovid's concept in the Amores and the Metamorphoses against the conventions of classical tradition and shows how, although Ovid's idea of...