Characters
Wilfred of Ivanhoe, the titular character, is a knight and son of Cedric the Saxon. Ivanhoe, though of a more noble lineage than some of the other characters, represents a middling individual in the medieval class system who is not exceptionally outstanding in his abilities, as is expected of other quasi historical fictional characters, such as the Greek heroes. Critic Georg Lukács points to middling main characters like Ivanhoe in Sir Walter Scott's other novels as one of the primary reasons Scott's historical novels depart from previous historical works and better explore social and cultural history.
Read more about this topic: Lady Rowena
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“No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has....”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The more gifted and talkative one’s characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.”
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