Heroic Discourse Research Articles

‘Clap for “some” carers’: Problematizing heroism and ableist tenets of heroic discourse through the experiences of parent-carers

Marketing scholarship has commonly demonstrated how consumers assemble heroic identities as a means to facilitate forms of empowerment and emancipatory consumption. Although some insight into more troubling aspects of heroic discourses has been shared, prioritisation of the positive potentialities of heroism remain privileged. We invoke social heroism as an interpretive lens to study the lived experiences of parent-carer’s to children with impairments, employing paradoxes of heroism as heuristics to explore how heroic discourses disempower parent-carers. We find that parent-carers do not identify with the heroism surrounding care. Instead, they view themselves as unessential due to the ableist tenets that underlie heroic discourses. We uncover three problematizing and subtle practices of ableism; purification, micro-aggressions and responsibilized-commoditization. Such insight, (i) advances marketing theory’s understanding of the socio-political structuring of heroism, (ii) advances discourse on consumer vulnerabilities and ableism and (iii) begins to meet the calls for research into care politics and justice.

«Пес Барбос и необычный кросс» в контексте советской культуры, фольклора и «игрового фантастического»

The article is devoted to the comedy by the Soviet film director Leonid Gaidai. The relevance of the topic is due to the approaching the 100th anniversary of the director’s birth (2023) and his high popularity throughout the post-Soviet years. At the Soviet time, however, criticism and film studies often denied that Gaidai’s films had semantic depth. The novelty of the author’s approaches consists in a detailed unbiased semantic analysis of the visual imagery of the 10-minute film Dog Barbos and Unusual Cross (1961), which previously was considered exclusively as a trick eccentric comedy. The author of the article proceeds from the culturological definition of Gaidai as a director who more explicitly than others rejected the serious and heroic discourse in the popular Soviet cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. The analysis of the images of the natural universe and their interaction with the characters reveals a hidden plot in the film — a journey into the depths of the unconscious and into a transitional zone, an otherworldly reality. The screen life of the characters is only partly a satire on the individual vices of ordinary citizens and an ironic view on the incapacity of the officialdom. The film creates a fantastic reality, which is a kind of privilege of the Coward, the Fool and the Pro. The author comes to the conclusion that Gaidai’s film extends beyond the genre of eccentric comedy and that its aesthetics has deep connections with myth and folklore.

Troubling Unintended Harm of Heroic Discourses in Social Justice Leadership

We aim to problematize the ways in which school leaders who seek social justice conflate heroic leadership discourses in their practices. Using qualitative data collected from an urban school principal, this study examines heroic metaphors utilized by the principal when describing social justice leadership and how heroic-centered approaches contradict with achieving social justice goals in school. The findings suggest that the principal’s idea of social justice leadership relies on discourse around “battles to win”, a savior complex, and seeing herself as the central model for driving change. Such heroic discourses reflect the principal’s sole reliance on herself as a savior for her staff and community, which ultimately contradicted the social justice ideals that she sought to accomplish. Our inquiry provides a window to problematize heroic discourse embedded in social justice leadership and address how school leaders must be cognizant to how their practices might conflate with social justice outcomes.

Идея славянской взаимности в мышлении чешских националистов в 1860-е - начале 1870-х гг. (на примере сокольского движения)

The author uses the case of the Sokol (Czech for a “falcon”) movement in the 1860s - early 1870s to examine the ideas of the Slavic origin of the Czech nation and its kind of “kinship” with the other Slavs as an important component of Czech nationalist thinking. The first Sokol was founded at the turn of 1862 in Prague and followed the model of the German “Turnvereins”, combining nationalism with physical exercises. Analysing the print media that played a vital role in Czech nationalist culture, the author shows that Czech nationalists constantly sought to emphasize their belonging to the Slavs through verbal, visual, and musical representaions. Among the main principles of Czech nationalist thinking was totalism, which meant conceiving the nation as the highest value. Putting Czech national interests over everything else led Czech nationalists to take the idea of Slavic reciprocity as their subsidiary identity used as an instrument to define and achieve their goals. One of the manifestations of this approach was the Czech commitment to the concept of Austro-Slavism - the cooperation of Slavic nations to make the policy of the Habsburg monarchy serve their joint interests. This concept can be associated with the stable interest in the issues of Galician Poles, Slovenes, and Croats. The attention of Czech nationalists to the rest of the Slavs had a wave-like character. During the period under study, such waves were caused by one of the regular Montenegrin-Turkish military conflicts in 1862 (the popularity of the so-called Junak or heroic discourse), the January Uprising in 1863 (PoLonophiLia and Russophobia) and the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which made Czech nationalists seek the external support (Russophilia). These trends have influenced the formation of the Sokol culture and the activities of the Sokol societies.

«МЫ БЕЗЗАВЕТНЫЕ ГЕРОИ ВСЕ...»: ГЕРОИЧЕСКИЙ ДИСКУРС И КУЛЬТ ЗНАМЕНИТОСТЕЙ В 1930-Е ГОДЫ

The article attempts to interpret the nature of the heroic discourse in Soviet culture of the 1930s. Based on published and archival sources, the hypothesis is offered, according to which the cult of heroes was associated with the search for an identity of the Soviet society adequate to the tasks of the power. The idea of a classless society, put forward by the 17th Conference of the VKP(b) in 1932, was supplemented by the image of a friendly family of Soviet peoples, in another version a country of heroes. Of all types of heroism, labor heroism came to the fore. All Soviet people, in accordance with this ideologeme, possess this dignity. A situation was needed in which a Soviet man could become a hero in labor, in aeronautics, in polar expeditions, and the fight against the enemies of the people. Such a situation was to be provided by the Stakhanovite movement. The victorious record-breakers were given the status of “noblemen” with the privileges attributed to them, including the right to fame. Thus, a new hierarchy was to emerge – a hierarchy of achievements, instead of a hierarchy of origin. The Stakhanovite movement developed under the rules of a political campaign with powerful ideological accompaniment. Each branch of the economy was represented by one or two record-breakers who became all-Union celebrities. Texts about their successes abounded in hyperbole; their personal stories were constructed along the same lines. The social outcome of the campaign was the creation of a workers' aristocracy as an additional pillar of the regime. The ideological outcome was the creation of a culture of success in society, a hope for attainable personal well-being. The images of Alexei Stakhanov and Dusya Vinogradova remained in the collective memory.

КОММЕМОРАЦИЯ ВЕЛИКОЙ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ ВОЙНЫ В КАРЕЛИИ: В ПОИСКАХ МЕСТА В «БОЛЬШОЙ» ИСТОРИИ»

The article analyzes commemoration strategies of the Great Patriotic War in Karelia. Regional memory politics is considered as a “two-level game”: within the region, where different mnemonic actors interact with each other during the dominant narrative formation; and externally, where the regional narrative is correlated with federal practices and interpretations. The article analyzes the ways the unique experience of Karelia in battling with a different enemy – the Finns – is perceived in the republic’s public discourse. The empirical basis of the research is as follows: archive materials, republic media publications, and semi-structured interviews with main actors of Karelia's memory politics. The study shows that there is a fragmented memory regime of war in Karelia. The dominant strategy of commemoration is to confirm the heroic discourse highlighting Karelia's contribution to the Victory. The narrative is mainly shared by the veteran and search organizations supported by the regional authorities. The alternative strategy is focusing on the commemoration of the occupational regime imposed on Karelia. The main supporters of this narrative are former prisoners of Finnish concentration camps, the representatives of archives, museums, and the scientific community. However, limitations of symbolic and communicative resources don’t allow them to compete with the dominant strategy of commemoration.

JOAN OF ARC BY D. S. MEREZHKOVSKY: SOURCES AND IMAGERY

The article examines the eternal image of the warrior maid in the works of D. S. Merezhkovsky, its constant features and evolution. His later book Joan of Arc (1938) is compared in this aspect to his early poem “A Legend from T. Tasso” (1882). Special attention is heeded to the analysis of the sources of Joan of Arc and the interpretation of the heroine as a warrior maid in comparison with the preceding texts, on the one hand, and “A Legend from T. Tasso,” on the other hand. Merezhkovsky’s creative reception of the historiographic tradition depicting Joan of Arc combines the topoi of its different versions (he reproduces a number of ideas characteristic of the texts written for the rehabilitation trial of Joan; the heroic discourse of the Renaissance historiography; the position of the 17th-century historians with Providentialist views; the representation of Joan of Arc as a folk heroine, typical for the liberal historians of the 19th century), but this conglomerate is subject to his own concept of the Kingdom of the Third Testament. It is established that, although in Joan of Arc Merezhkovsky sticks closer to the prior texts than in “A Legend from T. Tasso” on the superficial level and seeks to create the impression of documental accuracy, in fact, he uses the same mythologization method, as in his earlier work. The direction of modifications made by the author to the historiographic canon depends on his religious, mystical, and historiosophical notions.

Entre a cidade imaginária e a cidade sensível

O presente artigo visa compreender a relação da memória performatizada em museus para a construção de pertencimentos e identidades no contexto do Distrito Federal e em que medida o discurso heroico da conquista do sertão e o silenciamento sistemático das memórias dos construtores de Brasília - os chamados candangos como eram conhecidos os trabalhadores da construção civil - tanto de seu mérito como das agruras decorrentes da migração e fixação no Planalto Central, não só reflete como produz ainda hoje a marginalização de moradores de cidades periféricas ao perímetro planejado de Brasília. Sabendo que a mediação cultural exercida por estes espaços não é apenas reflexo ou produto, mas também produtora de sentidos outros, compreendo o direito à memória como caminho para a conscientização e fundamento de uma ação-reflexão.
 Palavras-chave: Museus, Distrito Federal, Brasília.

КОНФЛІКТИ ПАМ’ЯТЕЙ В СУЧАСНОМУ УКРАЇНСЬКОМУ ГЕРОЇЧНОМУ ДИСКУРСІ (СОЦІАЛЬНО-ФІЛОСОФСЬКИЙ АСПЕКТ)

The article presents the results of research of the formation of historical memory, conflicts of memories, the correlation of individual and collective memory in human consciousness, which today is one of the most relevant in the Ukrainian humanities, given the annexation of Crimea, Russian aggression against Ukraine and ongoing conditions the struggle for the establishment and assertion of the independence of our state. The phenomenon of historical memory is one of those that a wide range of humanities are trying to study: philosophy, history, sociology, culturology, psychology, etc. The semantic content of the concepts "conflict (or war) of memories", "individual historical memory", "collective historical memory", the relationship between the concepts of "memory" and "history" is considered. It is emphasized that memory is an important condition that determines the activity of a person and a certain social group. The reasons for the development of memory conflicts may be in the intensification of ambiguous interpretations of the past, opposing interpretations of the past, official policy in the cultural sphere, regional features of the interpretation of past events, which leads to changes in toponymy, symbolism, etc. In addition, today in Ukrainian society there are several vectors of conflicts of memory: from the memory of the USSR ("beautiful Soviet country" or "terrible totalitarian state") to one of the sharpest conflicts of memory, concerning the actual heroic discourse that unfolded with the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, raising a painful question: who to consider a hero? It is emphasized that today memories of the past, of collective historical traumas, and their processing are sometimes used to confront peoples and cause conflicts of memories. The past orients society to the system coordinates of "friend and foe", forms views on national interests and determines preferences. The task of the individual in these conditions - to maintain critical thinking and try to learn as deeply as possible the actual, archival material. It is argued that memory conflicts are a reflection of both individual and collective consciousness and need to be further understood in multidisciplinary scientific discourse.

Prosthetic memory: Re-creating the experience of trauma in Iñárritu’s 11'09''01

9/11 will always be a traumatic experience not only for Americans but also for the rest of the world. This trauma has been re-articulated in a number of mass culture or popular culture products, such as novels or films. As argued by Landsberg (2004), mass culture could be used to attract the public in making sense of history, memory, politics and identity, including traumatic moments. In this article, the chosen case, a short film by Iñárritu’s entitled 11'09''01 shows how a cultural product intended for the masses has the potentials to change the structure of memory construction. The film has been criticized to be focusing on the traumatic aspect and do not highlight the heroic discourse, which was the most celebrated notion of the 9/11 tragedy. As the most experimental entry, this article argues that the short film among the others in the same project represents an effort to empathize with the pain felt on that day by utilizing ‘authentic’ materials, such as segments of media broadcasts from all over the world and recordings of the victims’ last phone calls to their loved ones. It also uses the images of people falling or jumping from the two towers leading into the ethical challenges for the cinematic documentation of a traumatic event, which will also be discussed in this article. The main method of analysis is textual analysis and Landsberg’s conceptualization of Prosthetic Memory is used to interpret the data. The article concludes that the short film could be seen as a Transferential Space in transferring memories of 9/11 to the audience who might not have experience it directly.

Jan Palach w czeskiej poezji

The article tackles the analysis of lyrical pieces dedicated to Jan Palach. From the extensive material, including inter alia Kazimierz Wierzyński’s poem Na śmierć Jana Palacha w Pradze broadcasted by the radio station of Radio Free Europe, or the piece written by a popular Bulgarian poet, Valery Petrov, entitled Self-immolation, I have selected only those works which were created in Czechoslovakia right after Jan Palach had committed self-immolation. The primary reason for such a selection is that they were composed shortly after Palach’s act and were written by Czech and Slovakian poets emotionally committed to the dramatic political suicide of a young Prague student and experienced the events of January 1969 directly. As a consequence, the following works remain in my interest: Miroslav Holub’s Praha Jana Palacha and Josef Kainar’s Bolest at’ mi poví, published in a weekly magazine of the Association of Czechoslovakian Writers “Letters” on 23rd January 1969, Jan Skácel’s Hořící keř, as well as the poem by Pavol Horov Malé rekviem za Jana Palacha a iných, both published in “Letters” on 6th and 13th February accordingly, and the poem written on 30th January 1969 by Jan Zábrana entitled První (Noc v Tatrách). The aspects I am mainly interested in in the works referred to above are the manners of articulating the heroization of Jan Palach and his act. Indeed, these poems constitute a part of heroic discourse, they create heroic narration and present the self-immolated person in a blaze of glory as an indisputable hero

Городская скульптура и культурный код Волгограда в контексте брендирования территории

The sculpture and monuments of Volgograd are discussed in the article as cultural and symbolic objects expressing the local identity and the defining image of the city, and also as resources for branding areas. Field studies and analysis of publications in print and electronic media showed that in the period from 2006 to 2016. in Volgograd, it was installed about 50 different sculptural forms and art objects – sculptures, memorials, monuments, small architectural forms. The author carried out a content analysis of the sculptural text and made the classification of monuments installed over the last 10 years. There were identified dominant themes and motifs, proving the irreducibility of the identity of Volgograd to a common denominator with a predominance of heroic discourse of the Soviet past. Specific examples show that the development of object environment of Volgograd clarifies three main trends: the assertion of the identity of the city-hero, stream professional-corporate symbols, representation of the images of the pre-Soviet past, first of all, an appeal to the history and culture of Tsaritsyn. The empirical material of Volgograd highlights the key functions of modern urban sculptures and monuments: monumental, memorial, axiological, aesthetic, social, advertising, entertainment, cultural and educational. It’s stated that creation and promotion of a positive image of Volgograd as a modern city of cultural innovations is difficult in the absence of a developed strategy of cultural policy aimed at the use of intelligent, creative, real assets and the search for alterna- tive symbolic models.
 

The language of labor export in political discourse: “modern-day heroism” and constructions of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)

This article argues that the bagong bayani (new hero) representation of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) justifies labor export. Specifically, it seeks to account for the manner in which such a discursive label was shaped by political discourse surrounding the much publicized case of Flor Contemplacion, a domestic helper hanged for double murder in Singapore in 1995. Using textual analysis of Senate hearings and news reports, this paper shows that shared discursive themes found in the texts resonate with the heroic discourse of migrants. These themes are likewise argued to be inter-discursively linked with gendered and globalized discourses in society. Overall, the findings indicate that the heroic discourse and its linguistic elements downplay the state's fundamental role as a labor exporter and the contradictions associated with state sponsorship of overseas migration.

Everybody's coming back a hero: Reflections and deflections of heroism in the Gulf

This article examines the construction of the Gulf War veteran as a hero in the immediate post-Gulf War period (considered here as February 1991 to August 1991) and his relationship to gender, American national identity and the Vietnam War. President Bush and members of the media constructed the Gulf veteran as inherently masculine, moral and professional. This image replaced the violent Vietnam veteran stereotype, as well as the subsequent feminized, victimized figure. The article closely examines the relationship of the Gulf veteran to these Vietnam stereotypes. With an allegedly ideal sense of duty and morality, the Gulf veteran was characterized as a reluctant warrior, a man who did not like violence but, out of necessity, was willing (but not eager) to use it. He lacked the feminine qualities associated with the veteran as victim trope of popular Vietnam War representations, being positioned in between the extremes of masculinity and femininity. He represented a United States that was transformed from its Vietnam predecessor: the silent, impotent or paralysed Vietnam veteran now appeared articulate, virile and physically robust, with many public figures referring to General H. Norman Schwarzkopf as an example of this model of masculinity. Finally, the article scrutinizes some challenges to the heroic discourse of the time. Although many Gulf soldiers did not feel that their personal experience in the war warranted a heroic label, it dominated the public narrative. What were these men objecting to? How did the non-combative nature of the war present a challenge to the construction of heroism? In what ways were women and femininity excluded from this construction? The article scrutinizes the construction of the Gulf War as a masculine rite of passage that healed a broken American masculinity from the Vietnam era and made heroes out of American soldiers.

Constructing young masculinity: a case study of heroic discourse on violence

In this article, a young man's narratives of violence are analysed, and a culturally shared storyline is identified as the basis of these narratives. It is argued that the stories are organized so as to construct a preferred self-presentation. One strategy to achieve this is to establish boundaries for what type of violence to use, whom to fight, where and for what reasons. I also argue that the narratives are structured to avoid being categorized as either victim or perpetrator, although both categories are drawn upon. Issues of masculinity are made relevant through categorization of the characters in the narrative, and positions are made available. Different masculine categories such as the hero/villain/non-man become relevant in the analysis. Different gendered positions are used in negotiating a masculine identity around narratives of and through telling about violence.

Heroic frames: discursive constructions around the requested death movement in Australia in the late-1990s

This paper focuses on a critical development in the life of the requested death movement [McInerney, F. (2000). “Requested Death”: A new social movement. Social Science & Medicine, 50(1), 137–54.], that being the passage of the Northern Territory of Australia's Rights of the Terminally Ill (ROTI) Act 1995. This legislation, for the first time anywhere in the world, allowed for lawful euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, thereby fulfilling key requirements of the movement. Taking a constructionist perspective, I analyzed discursive representations of dying, death and medicine in selected Australian print media during this time period (1995–1997). The media's predilection for reporting dramatic and unusual death coincided with the movement's construction of contemporary dying as horrific, intractable, and intolerable. Across all analyzed publications and genres, an heroic discourse was found to be a dominant influence, couched within a dramatic framing that served to reinforce many of the claims of the requested death movement. The framing of requested death activists as heroes, and of requested death itself as a redeeming and transforming act for those seeking it, were preeminent in press portrayals. The dominance of this heroic discourse suggests that such media and movement frames worked in tandem to both resonate with and reinforce popular Australian notions of terminal illness and dying in the late 20th century.

The Pre-Emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom

Saul LandauLondon: Pluto Press, 2003. ix, 182pp, $38.95 cloth (ISBN 0-7453-2140-2)As Michael Moore and Ann Coulter can attest, there is a lot of money in partisan political commentary. Reviews of their books on booksellers' websites run into the hundreds, usually awarding the author either a furious one or enthusiastic five stars, depending on the political prejudices of the reader. Indeed, given the enormous sales of Moore and his fellow antagonists, there is a good case for arguing that their books--highly subjective, eccentrically researched and indomitably splenetic as they are--carry more weight with ordinary readers both inside and outside the United States than a hundred erudite articles in academic journals.With The Pre-Emptive Empire, Saul Landau, who describes himself as an internationally known scholar, author, journalist and activist, is the latest writer to answer the partisan call to arms. As is typical with works of this kind, his thesis is relatively simple. George W. Bush stole the presidential election in 2000 as part of a malevolent corporate plot, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in pursuit of the sinister designs of a neoconservative cabal, and, perhaps even more seriously, serves as the front-man for the destruction of the world by the baleful forces of globalization and world capital.These are not, it has to be said, unusual views. Neither are they so wholly divorced from reality as to qualify their author for immediate incarceration in the nearest sanatorium. But nowhere are they illustrated by anything that might pass for solid evidence; instead, Landau relies on partisan reports from sympathetic sources, piling assertion upon assertion in a rapidly rising pyramid of self-righteous anger. Indeed, at stage is there any suggestion that Landau has actually done any very detailed research for his book; like the Moores and Coulters of this world, he had need to, because he already knew what he believed before he began writing the book. And neither is there any suggestion, however meagre, of even the slightest self-doubt or complexity in Landau's view of the world. There are heroes and there are villains; their identity is self-evident, and only a fool or a dupe could question his judgement.Landau's great hero is President Fidel Castro of Cuba, who is twice described as a religious figure and is praised for his miraculous leadership, his practical political perspective and his heroic discourse of justice and independence (pp 103-04). Never does Landau even hint at the possibility that Castro might have the odd weakness to accompany his superhuman strengths, or that the Cuban regime might be less than paradise on earth. His treatment of the book's villains is equally subtle. In early chapter, the Bush family is likened to the murderous and corrupt Mafia family from the film Prizzi's Honor. President George W. Bush is twice lampooned for his struggle with alcoholism, while his father, who served as ambassador to the United Nations, envoy to China and director of the CIA, is described as having no qualifications (p 14) for the presidency he assumed in 1989. …

But I want to fly too!: Girls and superhero play in the infant classroom

This article describes a study which was conducted in an inner-city school in the north of England, in a base which contained 57 children aged 6 and 7 years old. The purpose of the study was to explore the potential role of popular culture in the literacy curriculum. During the project, a socio-dramatic role-play area which was related to a popular superhero icon was set up in the classroom. Children's play in the area was recorded using a variety of methods, including field notes, video recording and photographs. Some of the previous research on superhero play has focused on the attraction the discourse has for boys or suggested that girls take on a non-female persona in such a play. The findings from this study suggest that superhero play is strongly attractive to girls, who explore agency and autonomy through such play and actively position themselves as females within a heroic discourse.

Chaucer's Approach to Gender in the 'Canterbury Tales'

Dominant medieval discourses on gender pervavsive competition and fragile control - Chaucer's appraisal of masculine stereotypes in the frame narrative the heroic discourse - the Knight's Tale men in love and competition - the Miller's Tale and the Merchant's Tale competing ideas - Chaucer's clerks and academic disputes spirituality and competition masculinity, representations of ideal femininity in men's narratives, and the challenge female narrators and Chaucer's masquerade - the second Nun, the Prioress, and the Wife of Bath.

Poetics of the Homeric Simile and the Theory of (Poetic) Simile

The epic simile, particularly in some of its subcategories, is a unique junction of phenomena central to the general understanding and definition of The first part of this paper addresses the relations obtaining between the epic simile and some basic problems in the theory of simile. The second part describes three subcategories of the epic simile prominently used in the Iliad as deviations from a dominant norm. These deviant similes combine two simile utterances in a way which equates opposites, comparing the lion to the cow and the Greek hero to his Trojan opponent. In this way the deviant similes contribute to the theme of sameness, which makes it possible to bring the discourse of the Iliad closer to the modern antiheroic sensibility. Apart from giving a structural description, the discussion focuses on the cognitive processes by which similes-standard and deviant, or seemingly so-are read and interpreted. Analysis of the multiplied simile, in the double framework of a general theory of simile and of the interpretational history of the Iliad, supports a claim for the important role played by rejected elements in the interpretation of texts, which in turn supports a claim for the important roles that structural complexity and cognitive ambiguity play in directing the interpretive process. The epic simile, and particularly in some of its subcategories, is a unique junction of phenomena central to the general understanding and definition of A description of the poetics of the Homeric simile, therefore, provides a unique opportunity to discuss the components of simile, its structure, the process of its interpretation, and Poetics Today 13:4 (Winter 1992). Copyright ? 1992 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/92/$2.50. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.173 on Thu, 19 May 2016 05:12:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 738 Poetics Today 13:4 its thematic and aesthetic functions. Above all, Homeric simile illustrates the possibility, as well as the actuality, of a structurally discrete poetic simile. The first part of this article addresses the relations obtaining between the epic simile and some basic problems in the theory of simile. The second part describes three subcategories of the epic simile prominently used in the Iliad as deviations from a dominant norm. Apart from giving a structural description, the discussion focuses on the cognitive processes by which similes-standard and deviant, or seemingly so-are read and interpreted. In both parts, but particularly in the second, the analysis of specific examples centers on the thematic and aesthetic functions of the epic simile in the Iliad, emphasizing the particular contribution of the deviant forms of epic simile to a modern interpretation of the work. These deviant similes make it possible for a text composed in the style of heroic discourse, in which war is presented as the only mode of self-realization, to be read as an antiheroic, antiwar utterance. 1. Epic Simile and the Theory of Simile