by tasloi

Created on: October 03, 2007   Last Updated: September 10, 2009

The typical academic, shuttered away in a library rarely comes up for air, but Halloween is one of those occasions when the librarian becomes sexy and the academic...well, the academic gets to become his favorite character. Regardless of whether you're an academic, however, here are 10 characters from classic literary works that will require explaining, but contain multitudes of joy and laughter. Starting from the Middle Ages to the Modern...

1) GERMAN PHILOLOGER. A what?! In the mid-1800's, this was the cutting edge of the Ivory Tower as men like Henry Sweet combed through Old English documents and invented the rules for Old English language. You might not fully understand the concepts they deciphered (I'm not sure most Anglo-Saxonists really have a great grasp of the i-mutation), but an old tweed suit, a pair of round eyeglasses, hunched back and a pile of books or manuscripts will make you look like you're in the know.

2) THE GREEN KNIGHT. Different from the Green Giant you were in middle school, this guy carries a green axe and rides a green horse. And is a natty dresser...all in green. He also has a dual personality for those looking for couples costumes: his real identity is Bertilak of Hautdesert, the castle Gawain visits in the 14th century poem.

3) FAERIE QUEENE CHARACTERS. Here we can only be brief because the wealth of allegorical characters in this play leads to many, many possibilities. If you're daring, you can be Duessa, the beautiful, evil sorcerer who is stripped naked to reveal her wrinkled, pot-marked skin. If you're really creative, try one of the Seven Deadly Sins who accompany her: Sloth with a pillow and cheery pajamas, Pride with golden skin and so forth. Flavel, a liar, can be an easy costume if you have plenty of tongues hanging around.

4) SHAKESPEARE'S FALSTAFF. The portly old gentleman needs little more than clothes, a bump and a jar of mead!

5) THE WALL. In Midsummer Night's Dream, the bumbling actors decide they need a character to play the wall separating the lovers Pyramus and Thisby. You need a box painted as a wall with a chink in it. Not knowing what you're doing is requisite to play this role.

6) THE COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. Everyone has been forced to read Thomas Grey's "Elegy on a Country Churchyard" at least once. Take a box, turn it into a tombstone and you're good to go. If you want a group costume: add the solitary poet musing on the tombstones of the departed and more tombstones for a complete churchyard.

7) TITHONUS AND AURORA. Tennyson's poem describes the old, decrepit Tithonus who is doomed to live eternally growing old beside his lover Aurora, the goddess of the dawn. He asked for eternal life, but forgot to include youth and would really love to be a grasshopper. (Aurora eventually turns him into one.) A great couple's costume would have rosy-fingered dawn next to decaying Tithonus, decked in autumn leaves.

8) MY LAST DUCHESS. Browning's disturbing monologue offers the opportunity to be a smiling painting, complete with fancy dress and gilt frame (from a painted box). The only trick is you're also dead and the husband who murdered you likes to show you off to prospective suitors.

9) THE RAVEN. Everyone knows Poe's great poem with the haunting cry of, "Nevermore." If you have some black boas hanging around doing nothing, add a beak and some black clothing and you're good to hover over doorways.

10) BELOVED. Cross between ghost and a real human, she appears soaking wet on the doorsteps of Sethe's home. Possibly the daughter killed nearly 20 years earlier, possibly a girl kidnapped and abused for nearly 20 years. Creepy regardless.

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