Bread Loaf Lecture Series: “Charisma and Characterization" with Charles Baxter

What makes us fixate on a character so that we cannot look away? What causes a character to have power over us? Why do such people make us think about them? This is an immensely important and difficult topic, especially in these times, and I would like to talk about such characters as Morrison’s Sula, Melville’s Ahab, Dostoevsky’s Stavrogin, and possibly one of Shakespeare’s characters as “magnetic personalities.”