Literary Type

A literary type is an artistic image in which the individual traits of a personage are combined with a generalization of the essential, recurring properties of a certain group of people, era, or social milieu. Typification is the process of artistic generalization, selection, and concentration of the characteristic; a typical image embodies the general through the vividly individual ('a typical character in typical circumstances' — the formula of realism). A literary type may grow into an 'eternal image' or give its name to a social-psychological phenomenon (Oblomovism, Don Juanism, Hamletism). One distinguishes social, psychological, and historical types. The theory of the typical was developed by aestheticians from Aristotle ('poetry speaks of the general') to Georg Hegel and György Lukács. In Ukrainian literature, a gallery of social types was created by Ivan Karpenko-Kary (the acquisitive Kalytka in 'One Hundred Thousand' and Puzyr in 'The Master') and Ivan Nechui-Levytsky.