Anti Hero

The Anti-Hero in the American Novel rereads major texts of the 1960s to offer an innovative re-evaluation of a set of canonical novels that moves beyond entrenched post-modern and post-structural interpretations towards an appraisal which emphasizes the specifically humanist and idealist elements of these works.

Investigations into the heroic - or not - behaviour of the protagonists of medieval romance. Medieval romances so insistently celebrate the triumphs of heroes and the discomfiture of villains that they discourage recognition of just how morally ambiguous, antisocial or even downright sinister their protagonists can be, and, correspondingly, of just how admirable or impressive their defeated opponents often are. This tension between the heroic and the antiheroic makes a major contribution to the dramatic complexity of medieval romance, but it is not an aspect of the genre that has been frequently discussed up until now. Focusing on fourteen distinct characters and character-types in medieval narrative, this book illustrates the range of different ways in which the imaginative power and appeal of romance-texts often depend on contradictions implicit in the very ideal of heroism. Dr Neil Cartlidge is Lecturer in English at the University of Durham. Contributors: Neil Cartlidge, Penny Eley, David Ashurst, Meg Lamont, Laura Ashe, Judith Weiss, Gareth Griffith, Kate McClune, Nancy Mason Bradbury, Ad Putter, Robert Rouse, Siobhain Bly Calkin, James Wade, Stephanie Vierick Gibbs Kamath

In an epic poem narrated by a self-declared opponent of epic poetry, the hero and his 50 Argonauts are thrust aside by the first heroine of third-person narrative and a forerunner of the powerful women in fiction.

Explores cinematic representations of the "Jew" from film's early days to the present.

Revised and expanded edition for use with all Drama and Theatre Studies A & AS specifications.

This reader on Polish and Czech literature includes discussions of the Romantic Hero, Romantic reactions and developments, and the contemporary Anti-Hero. Essayists include Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Slowacki, Witold Gombrowicz, and Vaclav Havel.

The author argues that Heroizability, the ability of heroizing the major character, is the required theory for producing meanings in literary narratives introduced in three circles: the author's, the protagonist's, and the reader's. Based on an evolutionary model, heroizability treats literary characters as natural anthroposemiotic entities aware of their natural motivation to achieve in order to survive and produce meanings of their survival.