Stereotypes and representation in fiction

TLDR: For instance, this paper argued that the stereotype is a screen and therefore an obstacle to representation, and that it would be the opposite and negation of representation in every attempt to seize hold of a reality which is by definition diversified and complex.

Abstract: As a cultural model through which we perceive, interpret, and describe reality, the stereotype is necessarily linked with representation. Its preconstructed forms provide representation with foundations; they guarantee its possibility and legibility at the same time. This point of view, without any doubt, flagrantly contradicts public opinion, which opposes the stereotype to the accurate reproduction of reality that is to say, to the "living character," to the "faithful depiction of feelings," and to scenes described as "natural." In every attempt to seize hold of a reality which is by definition diversified and complex, the stereotype would act as a screen and therefore as an obstacle; in this sense it would be the opposite and the negation of representation. The persistent dichotomy between the "real" and the "conventional" is nevertheless, as we know, largely illusory in art. If it is true, as Gombrich (1960) has shown for the plastic arts, that all vision is conditioned by preexisting schemas, it is just as obvious that the literary text relies heavily on accredited models. Between the calm comfort of realistic illusion, and the irritation caused by the stereotype, there is only a very relative distance: that which separates the naturalized model where the reader confuses the stereotyped forms with reality as he sees it, from the prefabricated mold which he denounces as excessive codification and mere distortion of reality. The Russian Formalists' concept of "automatization" was designed to account for this process wherein convention stiffens and congeals. To really understand the stereotype in its constitutive relations with representation in fiction, it is, however, important to go beyond the original notion of automatization. The stereotype does indeed testify to the omnipresence of models which are not simply changeable literary conventions, but global cultural