Foils in Literature

[cacian]

what are the characteristic of a FOIL in literature?
What famous 'foil' characters in stories do you know of?

[hannah_arendt]

For example: Mary and Elizabeth from "Pride and prejudice"

[cafolini]

Alluminati foil. The thing I don't like about alluminum foil is that the bottom of the pizza never crisps well before the top is burnt.

[islandclimber]

Pizza no. But aluminum foil does work well for roasting things like yams and zucchinis in a camp fire. Just wrap them up and put them in amongst the coals. Presto. Well, 20 minutes later.

[cafolini]

Pizza no. But aluminum foil does work well for roasting things like yams and zucchinis in a camp fire. Just wrap them up and put them in amongst the coals. Presto. Well, 20 minutes later.

Agree. But Cacian will do pizza. LOL

[WyattGwyon]

what are the characteristic of a FOIL in literature?
What famous 'foil' characters in stories do you know of?

The foil relationship requires three things. I will use the characters Raskolnikov and Razumikhin from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment to illustrate each.

(1) Parallels between two characters—in life circumstances, personal characteristics, similarity of names, or so on—that invite and serve as a basis of comparison. The Dostoyevsky characters are both impoverished students in St. Petersburg; both of their names have meaning in Russian (Raskol means split, Razumikhin implies simplicity or simple-mindedness).

(2) Differentia — That is differential elements in their responses to similar circumstances or situations etc.—that are placed in special relief by the above-mentioned parallels. Raskolnikov gets depressed and becomes a hatchet murderer, Razumikhin, while suffering the same indignities, remains irrepressibly optimistic and balanced.

(3) The differential features seen in light of the underlying parallels yield thematically significant inferences. The presence of Razumikhin shows that Dostoyevsky wasn't simplistically indicting poverty as the cause of Raskolnikov's violence, since the former showed no inclinations in that direction despite suffering the same circumstances.

[Delta40]

For example: Mary and Elizabeth from "Pride and prejudice"

I would have thought FOIL would be more much prevalent in Science Fiction than classics... :yesnod:

[Steven Hunley]

A man and his foil I've heard of is Phillias Fog and Passepartout. One is obsessed with time, far from a ladies man, and precise with his time. The other is devil-may-care, a womanizer, and always getting delayed. Combined on the same expedition creates tension, also one compared to the other make both stand out.

[cacian]

The foil relationship requires three things. I will use the characters Raskolnikov and Razumikhin from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment to illustrate each.

(1) Parallels between two characters—in life circumstances, personal characteristics, similarity of names, or so on—that invite and serve as a basis of comparison. The Dostoyevsky characters are both impoverished students in St. Petersburg; both of their names have meaning in Russian (Raskol means split, Razumikhin implies simplicity or simple-mindedness).

(2) Differentia — That is differential elements in their responses to similar circumstances or situations etc.—that are placed in special relief by the above-mentioned parallels. Raskolnikov gets depressed and becomes a hatchet murderer, Razumikhin, while suffering the same indignities, remains irrepressibly optimistic and balanced.

(3) The differential features seen in light of the underlying parallels yield thematically significant inferences. The presence of Razumikhin shows that Dostoyevsky wasn't simplistically indicting poverty as the cause of Raskolnikov's violence, since the former showed no inclinations in that direction despite suffering the same circumstances.

Wyatt thank you very much for this useful post.
This makes me think of the star sign Libra/ Balance in French where one weight takes over the other. A bit like the symbol of justice. The heavy outweighs the weak.
On tragedy compensate for one's triumph happiness. Is that ever justified I wonder.


A man and his foil I've heard of is Phillias Fog and Passepartout. One is obsessed with time, far from a ladies man, and precise with his time. The other is devil-may-care, a womanizer, and always getting delayed. Combined on the same expedition creates tension, also one compared to the other make both stand out.

Interesting names Phillias Fog and Passepartout.
Passpartout sounds like the passport to everywhere and anywhere whereas fog is not usually dense unclear ie visibility is shun. I do not know the story however. I will look it up.

[hillwalker]

You're French but haven't read Jules Verne? Merde!

H

[cacian]

Agree. But Cacian will do pizza. LOL

depends what pizza one is talking about. I do a mean tomatoe and anchovies pizza. ;)


You're French but haven't read Jules Verne? Merde!

H
sacré bleu de bonsoir!! I am not a fan of Jules Verne. I am a Molière fan and even Hugo La Fable and Rousseau over Jules Verne. C'est la vie. Anyway Jules Verne was well known even before one has read it so I did not. ;)

[hillwalker]

I agree, 'Around the World in 80 Days' isn't as enjoyable a read as 'Madame Bovary'. But I would have hoped you might have read his adventures when you were une petit fille.

H

[cacian]

I agree, 'Around the World in 80 Days' isn't as enjoyable a read as 'Madame Bovary'. But I would have hoped you might have read his adventures when you were une petit fille.

H
Ah indeed ''Madame de Bovary'' an accident waiting to happen as I would like to describe it. I do finfdthe fact that the word 'Madame' in the title does it justice just slightly . This of course with reference to the meaning of 'Madame' that is often linked with with prostitution/brothels. As it goes I do refer to it as the '' mot juste'' if I may say so myself it could not be more appropriate with regard to the book.
On the other hand I often find the name Emma quite enchanting because after reading Jane Austen Emma I sometimes try to cross it with the Emma in Bovary and what a contrast of course one would not compare.
In Bovary Emma is almost a courtisane and in Austen she is a partisane for romance and coupling.
And if of course with Flaubert ''le mot juste'' comes to mind. Do you have any views on the 'right word'?

[hillwalker]

There's very little point in taking words out of context and interpreting them from a contemporary point of view.

I don't believe the word 'madame' as a brothel keeper is what Flaubert had in mind at the time of writing his novel. And you seem to be making unwarranted criticisms of Emma's behaviour on that basis.

'Madame' was simply the term for a married woman as you obviously know - the hidden agenda in the choice of title being sympathetic towards Emma's situation rather than judgemental of her actions. 'Madame Bovary' the wife of Mr Bovary. Subjugated to such a degree that she changed her name as is the custom in marriage. The point being was that Emma did not behave as if she was her husband's possession. She was rebellious and fought against the notion of being a dutiful wife by having an affair - and she ultimately paid the price for her insubordination. One of many 'liberated' women in literature.

H

[Jack of Hearts]

Courtesan? Liberated? Hardly. Emma seemed like a romantic idealist whose actions, generated from immature beliefs about love, destroyed lives.

Of course Flaubert was characteristically mute about the point, Madame Bovary being constructed of a narrative that was heavy on description and implicitness but zilch on moral assessment.







J

[cacian]

I somehow can't help but think of ''Lady 's Chatterley's Lover'' when I think of Bovary but that is me. I think differently.
The other thing I have to admit is that there is nothing liberating about Emma in Bovary. The way I look at it is that she was 'passed on' from one man to another and then let down by the very lovers she thought highly of. It tells me something about the society she lived in and reinforces the lack of emotional attachments the characters in Bovary seem to have been objected too. The exploits of Emma were purely sexual and nothing else came out of it and that is as far as I am concerned vacuous and not without consequences.
I could not help but notice the word OVARY in B/OVARY. Maybe that is another reason why I chose to focus on the word 'Madame' in contrast with a 'Madam' that runs a brothel.
Maybe Flaubert obsession for the 'juste word' was eventually fulfilled with the anagrams of 'Madame de Bovary' ie 'madam and ovary' and what is left are the letters 'E' 'DE' 'B' an anagram for BEDE/BEBE. Who knows. :)
That is my interpretations of things and of course anything goes when it comes to a story with a title it is open to suggestions and mine is as such.

One thing I do find fascinating about Madame de Bovary is that the heroine of the book is female called Emma and the writer is Flaubert a male. In contrast Jayne Eyre a female heroine to Bronte's sister a female writer or even Emma with Jane Austen.
The question is this:
Do male writers tend to fantasise their female lead characters with sexual subjectories for a deliverance of some kind a liberation of some sort take Lolita again Nabokov is a male writer.
It is just an observation worthy of making.

[Lokasenna]

I think differently.

I think we all know that by now.

Are you by any chance a follower of the Bible Code? Your habit of, shall we say, creatively re-interpreting the most mundane of details rather agrees with that particular kind of conspiracist philosophy.

...and if you are about to say something along the lines of the Venerable Bede having had something to do with either Madame Bovary or Lady Chatterly, I may have to vist considerable violence upon myself with a soup-spoon. Life just won't be worth living after that.

[Jack of Hearts]

Holy good frickin' cripes.

It's hard to imagine that assessment passing through the school system of your patrie, cacian. Are you sure you're French? For as awful as French schools are, they don't put up with such wishy-washy bs. They seem to demand a more sophisticated form of bs.

To say the novel is about sex/carnality displays a horrific comprehension of it. There is sex in it, and certainly a character driven by the concept of sexual conquest, but a) the sex is never described, it's left to implication and b) every instance of sexuality is used only to reinforce the central themes of the novel, which seems to be the consequences of (Emma's) being maladjusted to reality.

Actually, after critical analysis of the book, this reader has a new hypothesis: the central theme of Madame Bovary is just human sh*ttiness.

And no, you don't think differently. Nobody does. You just behave oddly on message boards-- a fact toward which this reader expresses no judgment.






J