A
hero , in
Greek mythologyGreek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
and
folkloreFolklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, was originally a
demigodThe term "demigod" , meaning "half-god", is commonly used to describe mythological figures whose one parent was a god and whose other parent was human; as such, demigods are human-god hybrids...
, their
cultHero cults were one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. In Homeric Greek, "hero" refers to a man who was fighting on either side during the Trojan War...
being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. Later,
hero (male) and
heroine (female) came to refer to
charactersA character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display
courageCourage is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation...
and the will for self sacrifice—that is, heroism—for some
greater goodValue theory encompasses a range of approaches to understanding how, why and to what degree people should value things; whether the thing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. This investigation began in ancient philosophy, where it is called axiology or ethics. Early philosophical...
of all humanity. This definition originally referred to
martialA warrior is a person skilled in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based society that recognizes a separate warrior class.-Warrior classes in tribal culture:...
courage or excellence but extended to more general
moralMorality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
excellence.
Stories of heroism may serve as
moral exampleMoral example is trust in the moral core of another, a role model. It was cited by Confucius, Muhammad, Mohandas Gandhi and other important philosophers and theologians as the prime duty of a ruler - including the head of a family or the owner of a business....
s. In
classical antiquityClassical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
, hero cults that venerated deified heroes such as
HeraclesHeracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
,
PerseusPerseus ,Perseos and Perseas are not used in English. the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty of Danaans there, was the first of the mythic heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits in defeating various archaic monsters provided the founding myths of the Twelve Olympians...
, and
AchillesIn Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
played an important role in Ancient Greek religion. Politicians, ancient and modern, have employed hero worship for their own
apotheosisApotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...
(i.e.,
cult of personalityA cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...
).
Etymology
Coined in English 1387, the word
hero comes from the
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
"ἥρως" (
heros), "hero, warrior", literally "protector" or "defender" the postulated original forms of these words being },
hērwōs, and },
Hērwā, respectively. It is also thought to be a cognate of the
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
verb
servo (original meaning: to preserve whole) and of the
AvestanAvestan is an East Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name...
verb
haurvaiti (to keep vigil over), although the original
Proto-Indoeuropean rootThe roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots always have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run", as opposed to nouns , adjectives , or other parts of speech. Roots never occur alone in the language...
is unclear.
According to the
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the Indo-European root is
*ser meaning "to protect". According to Eric Partridge in
Origins, the Greek word
Hērōs "is akin to" the Latin
seruāre, meaning
to safeguard. Partridge concludes, "The basic sense of both Hera and hero would therefore be 'protector'."
Classical hero cults
Hero cults could be of the utmost political importance. When
CleisthenesCleisthenes was a noble Athenian of the Alcmaeonid family. He is credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508/7 BC...
divided the
ancient AtheniansAthens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BCE and its cultural achievements during the 5th century BCE laid the foundations...
into new
demeIn Ancient Greece, a deme or demos was a subdivision of Attica, the region of Greece surrounding Athens. Demes as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and earlier, but did not acquire particular significance until the reforms of Cleisthenes in...
s for voting, he consulted the Oracle of Delphi about what heroes he should name each division after. According to
HerodotusHerodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
, the
SpartaSparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...
ns attributed their conquest of
ArcadiaArcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...
to their theft of the bones of
OrestesIn Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and purification, which retain obscure threads of much older ones....
from the Arcadian town of
TegeaTegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Tripoli, of which it is a municipal unit. Its seat was the village Stadio....
.
Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the gods. Thus Heracles's name means "the glory of Hera", even though he was tormented all his life by Hera, the Queen of the Gods. Perhaps the most striking example is the Athenian king
ErechtheusErechtheus in Greek mythology was the name of an archaic king of Athens, the re-founder of the polis and a double at Athens for Poseidon, as "Poseidon Erechtheus"...
, whom
PoseidonPoseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
killed for choosing
AthenaIn Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
over him as the city's patron god. When the Athenians worshiped Erechtheus on the
AcropolisThe Acropolis of Athens or Citadel of Athens is the best known acropolis in the world. Although there are many other acropoleis in Greece, the significance of the Acropolis of Athens is such that it is commonly known as The Acropolis without qualification...
, they invoked him as
Poseidon Erechtheus.
In the
HellenisticHellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Greek influence in the ancient world from 323 BCE to about 146 BCE...
Greek East, dynastic leaders such as the
PtolemiesThe Ptolemaic dynasty, was a Macedonian Greek royal family which ruled the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt during the Hellenistic period. Their rule lasted for 275 years, from 305 BC to 30 BC...
or
SeleucidsThe Seleucid Empire was a Greek-Macedonian state that was created out of the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great. At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir and parts of Pakistan.The Seleucid Empire was a major centre...
were also proclaimed heroes. This was an influence on the later,
RomanThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
apotheosisApotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...
of their emperors.
Analysis
The classic hero often came with what
Lord RaglanMajor FitzRoy Richard Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan was a British soldier, beekeeper, farmer and independent scholar. He is best known for his book The Hero, where he systematises hero myths.- Life :...
(a descendant of the
FitzRoy Somerset, Lord RaglanField Marshal FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan, GCB, PC , known before 1852 as Lord FitzRoy Somerset, was a British soldier.-Early life:...
) termed a "potted biography" made up of some two dozen common traditions that ignored the line between historical fact and mythology. For example, the circumstances of the hero's conception are unusual; an attempt is made by a powerful male at his birth to kill him; he is spirited away; reared by foster-parents in a far country. Routinely the hero meets a mysterious death, often at the top of a hill; his body is not buried; he leaves no successors; he has one or more holy
sepulchreThe rock-cut tombs in ancient Israel are a group of hundreds of rock-cut tombs constructed in Israel in ancient times. They were cut into the rock, sometimes with elaborate facades and multiple burial chambers. Some are free-standing, but most are caves. Each tomb typically belonged to a...
s.
The first Hero:
Hero (mythical priestess), in Greek mythology, priestess of Aphrodite, goddess of love, at Sestos, a town on the Hellespont (now Dardanelles). Hero was loved by Leander, a youth who lived at Abydos, a town on the Asian side of the channel. They could not marry because Hero was bound by a vow of chastity, and so every night Leander swam from Asia to Europe, guided by a lamp in Hero's tower. One stormy night a high wind extinguished the beacon, and Leander was drowned. His body was washed ashore beneath Hero's tower; in her grief, she threw herself into the sea.
The validity of the hero in historical studies
The philosopher
HegelGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
gave a central role to the "hero", personalized by
NapoleonNapoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
, as the incarnation of a particular culture's
VolksgeistVolksgeist is a German loanword for a unique "spirit" possessed collectively by each people or nation. The idea has its origins in the Romantic era and was proposed by Johann Gottfried Herder.Herder used this to create cultural sentiments on the people of Germany....
, and thus of the general
ZeitgeistZeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
.
Thomas CarlyleThomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
's 1841
On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History also accorded a key function to heroes and great men in history. Carlyle centered history on the
biographyA biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of a few central individuals such as
Oliver CromwellOliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
or
Frederick the GreatFrederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
. His heroes were political and military figures, the founders or topplers of states. His history of great men, of geniuses good and evil, sought to organize change in the advent of greatness.
Explicit defenses of Carlyle's position were rare in the second part of the 20th century. Most philosophers of history contend that the motive forces in history can best be described only with a wider lens than the one he used for his portraits. For example,
Karl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
argued that history was determined by the massive social forces at play in "
class struggleClass struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
s", not by the individuals by whom these forces are played out. After Marx,
Herbert SpencerHerbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
wrote at the end of the 19th century: "You must admit that the genesis of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown....Before he can remake his society, his society must make him."
As
Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
pointed out in his analysis of societal communication and debate, history was mainly the "science of the
sovereignSovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
", until its inversion by the "historical and political popular discourse".
The
Annales SchoolThe Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...
, led by
Lucien FebvreLucien Febvre was a French historian best known for the role he played in establishing the Annales School of history. He has designed the Encyclopédie française together with Anatole de Monzie.-Biography:...
,
Marc BlochMarc Léopold Benjamin Bloch was a French historian who cofounded the highly influential Annales School of French social history. Bloch was a quintessential modernist. An assimilated Alsatian Jew from an academic family in Paris, he was deeply affected in his youth by the Dreyfus Affair...
and
Fernand BraudelFernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects, each representing several decades of intense study: The Mediterranean , Civilization and Capitalism , and the unfinished Identity of France...
, would contest the exaggeration of the role of
individual subjectsIn philosophy, a subject is a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity . A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed...
in history. Indeed, Braudel distinguished various time scales, one accorded to the life of an individual, another accorded to the life of a few human generations, and the last one to
civilizationCivilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
s, in which
geographyGeography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
,
economicsEconomics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and
demographyDemography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...
play a role considerably more decisive than that of individual subjects. Foucault's conception of an "archeology"
(not to be confused with the anthropologicalAnthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
discipline of archaeologyArchaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
) or
Louis AlthusserLouis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
's work were attempts at linking together these various heterogeneous layers composing history.
Among noticeable events in the studies of the role of the hero and Great man in history one should mention Sydney Hook's book
The Hero in History
In the epoch of
globalizationGlobalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
an individual can still change the development of the country and of the whole world so this gives reasons to some scholars to suggest returning to the problem of the role of the hero in history from the viewpoint of modern historical knowledge and using up-to-date methods of historical analysis
Within the frameworks of developing counterfactual history, there are made attempts to examine some hypothetic scenarios of historical development. And the hero attracts much attention because most of those scenarios are based on the suppositions: what would have happened if this or that historical individual had or had not been alive
Heroic myth
The concept of a story archetype of the standard "hero's
questIn mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and...
" or
monomythJoseph Campbell's term monomyth, also referred to as the hero's journey, is a basic pattern that its proponents argue is found in many narratives from around the world. This widely distributed pattern was described by Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces...
pervasive across all cultures is somewhat controversial. Expounded mainly by
Joseph CampbellJoseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
in
The Hero with a Thousand FacesThe Hero with a Thousand Faces is a non-fiction book, and seminal work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell...
, it illustrates several uniting themes of hero stories that hold similar ideas of what a hero represents, despite vastly different cultures and beliefs.
Folk and fairy tales
Vladimir ProppVladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.- Biography :...
, in his analysis of the Russian
fairy taleA fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
, concluded that a fairy tale had only eight
dramatis personæDramatis personæ is a phrase used to refer collectively, in the form of a list, to the main characters in a dramatic work —- commonly employed in various forms of theater, and also on screen. Typically, off-stage characters are not considered part of the dramatis personæ...
, of which one was the hero, and his analysis has been widely applied to non-
Russian folkloreSlavic mythology is the mythological aspect of the polytheistic religion that was practised by the Slavs before Christianisation.The religion possesses many common traits with other religions descended from the Proto-Indo-European religion....
. The actions that fall into a such hero's sphere include:
- Departure on a quest
- Reacting to the test of a donor
In fairy tales, a donor is a character that tests the hero and provides magical assistances to the hero when he succeeds.The fairy godmother is a well-known form of this character...
- Marrying a princess (or similar figure)
He distinguished between
seekers and
victim-heroes. A
villainA villain is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters...
could initiate the issue by kidnapping the hero or driving him out; these were victim-heroes. On the other hand, a villain could rob the hero, or kidnap someone close to him, or, without the villain's intervention, the hero could realize that he lacked something and set out to find it; these heroes are seekers. Victims may appear in tales with seeker heroes, but the tale does not follow them both.
The modern fictional hero
Hero or heroine is sometimes used to simply describe the
protagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
of a story, or the love interest, a usage which can conflict with the superhuman expectations of heroism.
William Makepeace ThackerayWilliam Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
gave
Vanity Fair the subtitle
A Novel without a Hero. The larger-than-life hero is a more common feature of
fantasyFantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
(particularly
sword and sorcerySword and sorcery is a sub-genre of fantasy and historical fantasy, generally characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural...
and
epic fantasyHigh fantasy or epic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that is set in invented or parallel worlds. High fantasy was brought to fruition through the work of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, whose major fantasy works were published in the 1950s...
) than more realist works.
In modern
moviesA film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, the hero is often simply an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances, who, despite the odds being stacked against him or her, typically prevails in the end. In some movies (especially
action movieAction film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases...
s), a hero may exhibit characteristics such as superhuman
strengthPhysical strength is the ability of a person or animal to exert force on physical objects using muscles. Increasing physical strength is the goal of strength training.-Overview:...
and
enduranceEndurance is the ability for a human or animal to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from, and have immunity to trauma, wounds, or fatigue. In humans, it is usually used in aerobic or anaerobic exercise...
that sometimes makes him nearly invincible. Often a hero in these situations has a
foilIn fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character in order to highlight particular qualities of another character....
, the
villainA villain is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters...
, typically a charismatic evildoer who represents, leads, or himself embodies the struggle the hero is up against. Post-modern fictional works have fomented the increased popularity of the antihero, who does not follow common conceptions of heroism.
Hero as self
It has been suggested in an article by Roma Chatterji" that the hero or more generally protagonist is first and foremost a symbolic representation of the person who is experiencing the story while reading, listening or watching; thus the relevance of the hero to the individual relies a great deal on how much similarity there is between the two.
One reason for the hero-as-self interpretation of stories and myths is the human inability to view the world from any perspective but a personal one.
See also
- Action hero
An action hero is a character, usually a protagonist, in an action-adventure novel, film, television show, or game.-Further reading:*Osgerby, Bill, Anna Gough-Yates, and Marianne Wells. Action TV : Tough-Guys, Smooth Operators and Foxy Chicks. London: Routledge, 2001.*Tasker, Yvonne. Action and...
- Antihero
- Byronic hero
The Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"...
- Culture hero
A culture hero is a mythological hero specific to some group who changes the world through invention or discovery...
- Folk hero
A folk hero is a type of hero, real, fictional, or mythological. The single salient characteristic which makes a character a folk hero is the imprinting of the name, personality and deeds of the character in the popular consciousness. This presence in the popular consciousness is evidenced by...
- Germanic hero
A Germanic hero is the protagonist of certain works of early medieval literature mostly in Germanic languages. This hero is always a warrior, concerned both with his reputation and fame, and with his political responsibilities. The way in which he "copes with the blows of fate" is extremely important...
- Randian hero
The Randian hero is a ubiquitous figure in the fiction of 20th-century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, most famously in the figures of The Fountainheads Howard Roark and Atlas Shruggeds John Galt...
- Reluctant hero
The reluctant hero is a heroic archetype described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces:The reluctant hero is typically portrayed either as an ordinary person thrust into extraordinary circumstances which require him to rise to heroism, or as a person with extraordinary abilities...
- Romantic hero
The Romantic hero is a literary archetype referring to a character that rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has the self as the center of his or her own existence. The Romantic hero is often the protagonist in the literary work and there is a primary focus...
- Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
- Tragic hero
A tragic hero is the main character in a tragedy. Tragic heroes appear in the dramatic works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, Marston, Corneille, Racine, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Strindberg, and many other writers.-Aristotle's tragic hero:Aristotle...
- Youxia
- List of genres
Further reading
- Hein, David (1993). "The Death of Heroes, the Recovery of the Heroic." Christian Century 110: 1298-1303. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_n37_v110/ai_14739320 or http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000242002
- Henry Liddell
Henry George Liddell was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, dean of Christ Church, Oxford, headmaster of Westminster School , author of A History of Rome , and co-author of the monumental work A Greek-English Lexicon, which is still used by students of Greek...
and Robert ScottRobert Scott was an English academic philologist, clergyman, and a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford...
. A Greek-English Lexicon http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057
External links
- The British Hero - online exhibition from screenonline
Screenonline is a Web site devoted to the history of British film and television, and to social history as revealed by film and television. The project has been developed by the British Film Institute and funded by a £1.2 million grant from the National Lottery New Opportunities Fund.Reviews...
, a website of the British Film InstituteThe British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
, looking at British heroes of film and television.
- Listen to BBC Radio 4's In Our Time programme on Heroism