Hero Ego In Search Of Self

In Hero-Ego in Search of Self, Judy Anne White offers a perceptive explanation for continued interest in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. Building upon the earlier work of Jeffery Helterman and John Miles Foley, she argues that the sum of all confrontations between hero and monster in Beowulf equals the process of individual psychological development identified by Carl Jung as individuation. Dr. White's study proposes that the hero's struggle is the universal struggle towards self-knowledge - and that Beowulf thus resonates for the contemporary reader as it did for the poet's original audience.

Of unknown authorship, Beowulf is an Old English epic poem which incites contentious debate and has been endlessly interpreted over the centuries. This Reader's Guide provides a much-needed overview of the large body of Beowulf criticism, moving from 18th century reactions to 21st century responses. Jodi-Ann George: - Charts the changes in critical trends and theoretical approaches applied to the poem. - Includes discussion of J. R. R. Tolkein's pioneering 1936 lecture on Beowulf , and Seamus Heaney's recent translation. - Analyses Beowulf in popular culture, addressing the poem's life in film versions, graphic novels, music and comics. Clear and engaging, this is an indispensable introductory guide to a widely-studied and enigmatic work which continues to fascinate readers everywhere.

After an extensive introduction that takes stock of the relevant research literature on Old Age in the Middle Ages and the early modern age, the contributors discuss the phenomenon of old age in many different fields of late antique, medieval, and early modern literature, history, and art history. Both Beowulf and the Hildebrandslied, both Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Titurel, both the figure of Merlin and the trans-European tradition of Perceval/Peredur/Parzival, then the figure of the vetula in a variety of medieval French, English, and Spanish texts, and of the Old Man in The Stricker's Daniel, both the treatment of old age in Langland's Piers the Plowman and in Jean Gerson's sermons are dealt with. Other aspects involve late-antique epistolary literature, early modern French farce in light of Disability Studies, the social role of old, impotent men in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlandish paintings, and the scientific discourse of old age and health since the 1500s. The discourse of Old Age proves to have been of central importance throughout the ages, so the critical examination of the issues involved sheds intriguing light on the cultural history from late antiquity to the seventeenth century.

Beowulf's presence on the popular cultural radar has increased in the past two decades, coincident with cultural crisis and change. Why? By way of a fusion of cultural studies, adaptation theory, and monster theory, Beowulf's Popular Afterlife examines a wide range of Anglo-American retellings and appropriations found in literary texts, comic books, and film. The most remarkable feature of popular adaptations of the poem is that its monsters, frequently victims of organized militarism, male aggression, or social injustice, are provided with strong motives for their retaliatory brutality. Popular adaptations invert the heroic ideology of the poem, and monsters are not only created by powerful men but are projections of their own pathological behavior. At the same time there is no question that the monsters created by human malfeasance must be eradicated.

Features an introduction and a commentary that incorporates the scholarship on "Beowulf" that has appeared since 1950. This work includes detailed bibliographic guidance to discussion of textual cruces, as well as to modern and contemporary critical concerns. It also addresses aids to pronunciation and advances in the study of the poem's language.

Taking up the various conceptions of heroism that are conjured in the Harry Potter series, this collection examines the ways fictional heroism in the twenty-first century challenges the idealized forms of a somewhat simplistic masculinity associated with genres like the epic, romance and classic adventure story. The collection's three sections address broad issues related to genre, Harry Potter's development as the central heroic character and the question of who qualifies as a hero in the Harry Potter series. Among the topics are Harry Potter as both epic and postmodern hero, the series as a modern-day example of psychomachia, the series' indebtedness to the Gothic tradition, Harry's development in the first six film adaptations, Harry Potter and the idea of the English gentleman, Hermione Granger's explicitly female version of heroism, adult role models in Harry Potter, and the complex depictions of heroism exhibited by the series' minor characters. Together, the essays suggest that the Harry Potter novels rely on established generic, moral and popular codes to develop new and genuine ways of expressing what a globalized world has applauded as ethically exemplary models of heroism based on responsibility, courage, humility and kindness.

An enlightening collection of inter-disciplinary research on the multifarious incarnations of the monster, 'Monstrous Manifestations' invites the reader to venture into the deepest anxieties of the human psyche.

Joseph Campbell, arguably the greatest mythologist of our time, was certainly one of our greatest storytellers.