Notions Of Heroism Research Articles

The Name is Lynd, Vesper Lynd a mirror in Casino Royale

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of Vesper Lynd in Fleming's Casino Royale, comparing her portrayal in both the novel and its film adaptation. Through an exploration of gender representations, heroism, morality, and interpersonal dynamics, the discussion delves into the complexities of Lynd as a mirror to James Bond. It examineshow she challenges traditional gender norms and notions of heroism, while also prompting moral dilemmas for Bond. By analysing the differences between the media, it reveals the nuances of her characterization as a multifaceted character who transcends the archetype of the Bond girl, offering a profound reflection on human nature.

New age spectacles: Understanding the semiotics of cricket through Roland Barthes’ ‘The World of Wrestling’

ABSTRACT Though written in 1957, Roland Barthes’ ‘The World of Wrestling’ from Mythologies resonates with sports even today. As a choreographed fight between a pre-assigned hero and villain, wrestling plays out the archetypal moral narrative using the bodies of the participants. With exaggerated gestures and expressions, these bodies send clear messages to the surrounding audience, who aggressively cheer them on even as they know the fabricated nature of the entire event. This paper seeks to identify the semiotic structures underlying these performances using Barthes’ views on signification, denotation/connotation and ‘myth’. This framework is juxtaposed with contemporary cricket to illustrate how cricket adapts similar semiotic structures into its spatiotemporal setup, players, body politics, media representation, appearance, choreography and spectatorship. It also examines the moral ideologies governing cricket, especially notions of heroism, justice and the spectacle that can be traced back to ancient theatre. It ends with an understanding of how Barthesian wrestling can be used to analyse other contemporary sports too, suggesting directions for further research in this area.

Somewhat ‘of the old manner of romances and somewhat of the new’: Francis Kirkman’s continuations to Don Bellianis of Greece

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to assess Francis Kirkman’s claim that his Bellianis of Greece Part II (1664) and Part III (1672), his two continuations to the English translation of Part I (1598) of the Spanish chivalric romance Belianís de Grecia (1547), purposefully mix features of sixteenth-century romances of chivalry with elements of the so-called new romances that had consolidated in England in the mid-seventeenth century following French models. Kirkman’s singular crossbred romances are discussed here with regard to four specific aspects that reveal their mixed nature: (1) disruption and the observance of the principles of unity of action and true resemblance; (2) representations of love as a peace-seeking force, and (3) as inseparable from the mandates of decorum; and (4) notions of heroism, particularly that of women. This analysis ultimately disassembles Kirkman’s continuations in order to show how he, in practice, deliberately and successfully produces a hybrid romance form out of one of the seminal old-school books of knight-errantry.

Clapping for carers in the Covid-19 crisis: Carers' reflections in a UK survey.

This paper reports and discusses the weekly Clapping for Carers – described as ‘front‐line heroes’ that took place across the United Kingdom during the first national lockdown of the coronavirus pandemic. Data are drawn from a UK‐wide online survey of health and social care workers, completed in May to July 2020. The survey received 3,425 responses of which 2,541 were analysed; free‐text comments were categorised. One question asked specifically: ‘Do you think the “Clap for Carers” was a helpful response from the public?’, and 815 comments were provided. Responses were extracted from these 815 free‐text comments and categorised as follows: unequivocally Yes, predominantly Yes, mixed feelings, predominantly No and unequivocally No. Most comments revealed mixed feelings about the helpfulness of Clapping with only a minority being entirely supportive. The free‐text comments offer some explanations for these views with many feeling that Clapping distracted from the severity of the pandemic and the inadequate resources. The free‐text comments reveal workforce concerns that the support demonstrated for the frontline workforce in Clapping might be transitory and that it may not translate into workforce improvements and political commitment to further funding of health and social care. Some saw the value of Clapping as illustrative of community cohesion. There was little mention of Clapping for heroes, and where it was the notion of heroism was rejected. The demonstration of public support in Clapping for Carers may have directly benefitted the public, but only indirectly the workforce. Future recruitment data may help discern if public support has translated into a desire to join the workforce.

Farcical heroism: Aimé Césaire reads Homer, Virgil, and Plautus

The article analyses how Aimé Césaire in his seminal book-length poem Cahier d’un retour au pays natal carefully yet discrepantly reworks the tradition of epic writing to appropriate central topoi of the epic, which he claims as a point of departure for postcolonial writing. In this foundational text of Antillean literature, Césaire presents an intertextual rebuttal of the key features of epic writing that allows him to redirect the genre’s orientalist trajectory towards resistance to colonial oppression. The article argues that Césaire challenges the authority of epic tradition with a notion of heroism that reflects the subversive mode of farce in the vein of Plautus.

Tears and the manly sailor in England, c. 1760–1860

This article explores the apparent paradoxes in representations of the British Jack Tar in order to reconsider the ways in which his figure came to embody idealised attributes of manliness in the period 1760–1860. Naval historians have revealed that images of sailors were closely related to ideas about class, sex, and nation, identifying distinctive types of Jack Tar such as the drunken carouser, the fatalistic, fearless but simple Tar, and the domesticated family man. Notions of heroism changed over the period too. The officer was the hero in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and notions of valour only extended to the lower ranks by the mid-nineteenth century. Thus the picture is of the ordinary tar emerging as manly hero once his character was scrubbed clean of its less salubrious aspects. This article argues that there were not diverse and distinct Jack Tars successively climbing the ladder of morality over time. The tar was not sanitised and civilised, but was given feelings. In particular, tears identified the sailor as a man of feeling as well as a fearless fighter, stressing his tenderness, fidelity, duty, and self-sacrificing love for his brother sailor, his ‘Poll’, and his nation. But he still loved grog, dance, and girls. The Jack Tar was thus the everyman, which aided his popularity and democratised the manly hero.

Milton’s Portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost and the Notion of Heroism

This paper examines the question whether Satan is really the hero of John Milton’s great epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). There are controversial debates over this issue, and most critics believe that, although Satan acts and speaks heroically, God is the real hero of the poem, not Satan. The paper adopts the analytical approach. The findings of the paper reveal that the central character Satan is a devil that acts for his own self-interests, and cannot do good, even to his followers, the fallen angels. The paper finally shows that, every impulse in Satan towards good has died out. The element of nobility that redeemed his character at the outset from absolute baseness has been killed. Hardly therefore shall we believe that Milton meant us to see in the fallen and ever falling archangel the hero of his poem. That position surely belongs to Adam.

Masked justice: allegories of the superhero in Cold War Japan

I examine Gekkō Kamen (Moonlight Mask), one of the earliest postwar heroes, as a palimpsest of identity anxieties in postwar Japan. The turban-and-sunglass-wearing, motorcyclemounted, pistol-toting, shuriken-throwing hero dressed all in white drew as much on Captain America and Superman as it did on Japanese ninja stories and wartime hero stories, such as Golden Bat. Gekkō Kamen was also a template for a new kind of hero with a bike between his knees and a mask over his mouth.In 1958 when the series was launched, it may have been difficult to foresee Gekkō Kamen's future global impact as Capitan Centella, when translated into Spanish, but the local impact was immeasurable. Although the series was canceled after a child died attempting a stunt from the show, the cultural position of Gekkō Kamen continues today and can be seen in as varied venues as Ultraman in the 1960s, the Kamen Rider and Japanese Spiderman TV series of the 1970s, and Go Nagai's spoof Kekkō Kamen, the busty, underwear-clad female superhero. The hybrid and miscegenated figure of Gekkō Kamen represented a new mode of heroic selfidentification that carried with it nationalism pitched at the global level rather than national or regional levels. Close examination of the odd identities of the heroes and villains in the 1958 series reveals the fears endemic in the rebuilding nation and bipolar world order. As both a mirror and projector of masks, Gekkō Kamen provides stunning frame for focusing on cold war notions of heroism and bravery.

Breakdown Is Built into It: A Politics of Resilience in a Disabling World

Resilience is an interdisciplinary concept that has been interrogated and investigated in a number of fields of research and practice including psychology, climate change, trauma studies, education and disaster planning. This paper considers its position within critical disability studies, popular understandings of disability and the emergence of a disability culture...

“Taking This from This and That from That”: Examining RZA and Quentin Tarantino’s Use of Pastiche

“Taking This from This and That from That”: Examining RZA and Quentin Tarantino’s Use of Pastiche

Continuities and Disjunctions: Investigating British Poetry Anthologies of the Second World War

British Second World War poetry provides a rich and complex set of voices offering multiple perspectives on notions of heroism, selfhood, youth, combat, civilization, and the relationship between art, politics, and wartime society. While First World War poetry has had a dominant role in shaping the war poetry genre, becoming embedded in a range of cultural practices, Second World War poetry has also been of increasing interest to anthologists and literary critics during the post-war period and has been mapped, reappraised and reconceptualized as significant in its own right. Beginning with this critical and contextual perspective, the article focuses on the anthology form and the set of poetry anthologies published during Second World War. It explores the value of these anthologies as literary and cultural historical sources, using taxonomical and textual inquiry into the tropes, techniques, themes, and agendas of the poems and the anthologists’ editorial approaches.

War Heroes and Pacifists on the Same Front: Re-reading Heroism in Two Imperial War Memoirs

This article explores the notion of heroism in Victorian war literature by analyzing the figure of the soldier-hero in two imperial war memoirs: Captain Mowbray Thomson’s The Story of Cawnpore: The Indian Mutiny and John Pearman’s The Radical Soldier’s Tale. While The Story of Cawnpore is an emblematic example of what we call the Victorian hero myth, that is, the effective merging of traditional heroism, war as adventure and imperialism in mid-to late-nineteenth century Britain – The Radical Soldier’s Tale appears to posit an alternative to this widely accepted view, challenging its assumed universality and immutability. By analyzing Pearman’s innovative revision of heroism, in contrast to Thomson’s more conventional representation of the theme, this article attempts to illustrate both the traditional construction and a possible re-reading of the subject taking place in the same period. In order to do so, we focus on the three main aspects around which the representation of the nineteenth-century soldier-hero is articulated: the consolidation of traditional heroic manhood in the context of imperial war, the complex social justification of war and the demonization of the Other as a way of validating the heroic self. Particular attention is given to the fact that Pearman’s shift towards a more complex appreciation of the heroic subject appears to anticipate similar patterns occurring in the literature written during and after World War One.

The Falklands/Malvinas 25 years on: a comparative analysis of constructions of heroism on Argentinean and British television

This paper examines constructions of war heroism within the context of the commemoration in 2007 on Argentinean and British television of the 25th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War. In order to do this, it combines two analytic frameworks: synchronic-diachronic analysis (Pardo 2006, 2008, 2010) and revisionist face-work/politeness analysis (e.g. Bravo 1999). The origins of both frameworks, especially the synchronic-diachronic analysis, lie in Latin America/Spanish linguistic scholarship. Methodologically, therefore, our analysis moves beyond traditional examination of non-Western contexts and cultures through Western analytic/theoretical models. The results reveal several differences in the discursive construction of heroic selves within mass mediated commemorative practices in Argentina and the United Kingdom. Thus, while Argentinean constructions generally coincide with a ‘modern’ notion of heroism, which highlights individualism and extra-ordinariness, British ones generally coincide with a ‘postmodern’ notion of the ordinary, ‘banal’ hero. Both sets, however, incorporate some elements, respectively, of ‘postmodern’ and ‘modern’ heroism. This suggests a gradual (post)modern heroism in the corpus rather than a binary (modern–postmodern) construction.

Virtuous Viragos: Female Heroism and Ethical Action in Shakespearean Drama

Virtue, from the Latin vir for manly courage and strength, was the mark of male excellence in Renaissance culture. Embodying both physical and moral strength through the famous figure of Hercules, virtue took on other values of courtly gentility and political prudence as the medieval warrior society was gradually transformed into the modern state. In inverse proportion to the expansion of male virtue, the conception of the virago underwent a corresponding constriction and decline from a manlike, heroic woman to a scold. Encompassing both physical and moral excellence (OED 2a, 7), male virtue came to appropriate the heroic definition of virago, and female virtue, by Shakespeare’s time, became confined to chastity (OED 2c). Challenging the traditions of male virtue and female monstrosity in Renaissance drama, this essay examines the virtuous viragos populating the Shakespearean canon, who present themselves as better models of ethical action than men, with whom virtue is etymologically and historically associated. This study examines two nuanced conceptions of female heroism and ethical action centering on the erotic and politic Cleopatra and the chaste, self-affirming Desdemona as virtuous viragos. Moreover, the notion of heroism, traditionally associated with tragedy, translates to the less exalted but more prudentially successful ethical action of viragos in Shakespeare’s comedies such as The Taming of the Shrew. I argue that virtuous viragos attain their ethical stature against this male-inflected standard of tragic heroism even while calling for its dismantling and replacement with the more discerning framework of neo-Aristotelian virtue grounded on practical wisdom.

Consuming Media, Making Men: Using Collective Memory Work To Understand Leisure and the Construction of Masculinity

Parents, educators, researchers and policymakers have sought to identify the root causes of male youth violence by looking at media's influence on young people. Grounded in social constructionism, this study uses collective memory work to explore that relationship. The findings are presented in terms of two levels of analysis: individual/micro messages and societal/macro messages and revealed that through media consumption, men actively constructed and maintained impressions of masculinity based on notions of heroism, violence, and ‘macho’ images. This process gave participants an opportunity to both solidify and challenge their own thinking in relation to what it means to be a man and is a first step toward demonstrating some of the “problems” associated with leisure contexts, media consumption and hegemonic masculinity.