Romantic Hero Research Articles

NATIONAL COLOURING IN ROMANTICISM ON THE EXAMPLE OF LITERARY-CRITICAL STUDIES BY K. ZHUSSIP

Nowadays, the study of Romanticism as a significant phenomenon in literary studies is mainly focused on the investigation of its development under the influence of national characteristics. This research aims to identify the distinctive interpretations of romantic motifs in the works of Kazakh Romanticism poets. Specifically, the article provides an analysis of the development of romantic ideas using Kazakh romantic poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries as a case study, addressing the manifestation of Kazakh national characteristics rooted in Kazakh culture. By analysing the romantic works of Kazakh poets, the conceptual imagery of Romanticism is elucidated. Various research methods, including content analysis and semantic analysis of poetic texts, were used to demonstrate that Romanticism, as an emotional perception of the world and reality, transcends national boundaries. The study concludes that literary creativity is multifaceted, and linguistic analysis helps authors to effectively advocate Romanticism as a means of expressing national characteristics in literature, thereby contributing to the globalisation of cultural understanding. In addition, the study of the emergence of a new hero in romantic works, particularly in religious discourse, as exemplified by the literary-critical contributions of K. Zhussip, is identified as a promising avenue for future research. Keywords: Romanticism, national colouring, romantic hero, literary critical studies, images.

The anxiety of influence unbound. Shelley’s Prometheus and Philippide’s Prometheus in the looking glass

The paper draws a brief parallel between the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound (1820) and of the Romanian Alexandru Philippide The Banishment of Prometheus (1922). It starts from the Greek writers’ image of Prometheus in Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony and in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Unbound. It also discusses Harold Bloom’s theory as it analyses the potential anxiety of influence of the Greek writers on Shelley and Philippide and it shows forth this effect seen as a “revisionary ratio” and named by Bloom (1973) a tessera, which means “completion and antithesis”. Both authors create a complex Prometheus character who holds multiple facets. Both authors shape Prometheus as a figure that contains the Western core of values, be they positive or negative. Prometheus actually commits the original sin for man’s sake. This haughty act can be compared to the biblical theft of forbidden knowledge. The author claims that the aim of this theft and the punishment meted out to Prometheus by Zeus are destined to estrange man from nature and from God and to push man into hubris. These also kindle man’s Faustian propensity which turns man into his own divinity, or which recasts the divinity according to man’s own design. If Shelley’s Prometheus turns out to be the Romantic hero achieving moral and intellectual perfection, being uplifted by authentic, selfless and noble goals, Philippide’s Prometheus is the disillusioned, bitter hero from a well-wrought ars poetica, who seeks another mankind on whom to bestow his love and selfless goodwill gestures. His poem represents a symbol of the artist living in his ivory tower failing to be understood by his fellow beings.

An Analysis of the Female Images in Tolkiens Works: Galadriel, owyn and Arwen

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is well recognized for his notable contributions to the genre of heroic romances, as shown by his renowned works, namely The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Consequently, he is widely regarded as the progenitor of contemporary fantasy literature. The study aims to examine the principal female characters in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, namely Galadriel, owyn, and Arwen, employing textual analysis and comparative study as the primary methods. The former two individuals serve as exemplars of female warriors, characterized by their courage, strength, unwavering convictions, and relentless pursuit of their aspirations. The latter represents a somewhat less favorable portrayal of the female image. Arwen, being designated as the "second sex", is shown with a dearth of individual narratives and distinct characteristics, primarily serving as a supporting figure to the male protagonists within the story. Nevertheless, despite the deficiencies in Tolkien's depiction of female representations, the merits of his work ultimately surpass the drawbacks.

Hoffmann traditions in Selma Lagerlöf ’s novel “Gösta Berling’s Saga”

The article focuses on the study of Hoffmann traditions in Selma Lagerlöf ’s novel “Gösta Berling’s Saga”. The features of Hoffman’s poetics in the novel are revealed by using the methodology of the “Hoffman’s complex”, which is an ideological and thematic complex of motives and stylistic techniques inherent in the works by E. T. A. Hoffman. The “Hoffmann’s complex” is manifested in the novel in the problem of the rebellion of the Romantic hero-creator in relation to faith and religion, the problem of the relationship of the Romantic hero with femininity, the opposition of secular and Christian love, the motive of mechanization of man and society in the new capitalist industrial formation. The features of Hoffmann’s poetics were manifested in the novel “Gösta Berling’s Saga” also in the interweaving of Hoffmann’s images (Don Juan (“Don Juan”), Medardus (“The Devil’s Elixirs”) and plots (a defrocked monk, who under the influence of wine as an incarnate temptation, commits crimes and experiences a split of personality (“The Devil’s Elixirs”) and a rebellious Romantic hero in search of an unattainable ideal world in which his disintegrated personality must find consolidation (“Don Juan”). The conclusion sums up that S. Lagerlöf, relying on the plot, problems and images of E. T. A. Hoffman’s works (“Don Juan”, “The Devil’s Elixirs”, “Adventure on New Year’s Eve”), creates the author’s concept of spiritual transformation of personality through Christian love and reconsiders the image of a Romantic hero, transforming it into a new type of Christian Neo-Romantic hero.

Neo-romantic hero: Vital characters in Holger Drachmann’s short stories

The article focuses on the specific type of literary hero that is common in the short stories of Holger Drachmann, who was considered the most prominent Danish writer in the early 20th century. His first books, “Poems” and a collection of short stories, “With Charcoal and Chalk”, were published in 1872. At the time, Drachmann belonged to the modernist movement and was one of Georg Brandes’ students, but later he changed his political and aesthetic preferences and moved away from the group of Brandes’ followers. Drachman’s artistic style is very special because it has features of Naturalism, Romanticism, Impressionism and Symbolism. But it is possible to conclude that his artistic manner can be called “neo-romantic” according to the contemporary terminology. The characters in his early collections of short stories are vivid, honest, and strong, and they represent the common type of neo-romantic hero that is inherent in other texts related to Neo-Romanticism. Very often Neo-Romanticism is seen as a “reaction” to Naturalism and a return to the principles of Romanticism, but it seems that Neo-Romanticism is much more like Naturalism than Romanticism. The type of neo-romantic hero is closer to naturalistic characters than to romantic characters, because it is a courageous and extraordinary person, an outsider and a rebel, his life is full of desire, risk and adventure, and it looks like a romantic hero, but a neo-romantic hero is a physically and mentally healthy person, and this character is determined by nature and genesis, which is the main feature of Naturalism. Drachman creates a new type of hero in Danish literature: the vital, strong character who struggles with nature and circumstances. His characters have the healthy genetics of ordinary people. Neo-Romanticism in Danish literature was strongly influenced by Naturalism and was the original phenomenon of national literature.

DEFINING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BYRONIC HERO IN THE CONTEXT OF ROMANTICISM

The paper seeks to account for the characteristics of the Byronic hero in the theoretical context of romanticism. Lord Byron was an English poet of the Romantic school. With his contemporaries like Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley and many others, they have addressed the major problems of their epoch through their heroes. But, Lord Byron has refused to provide his heroes with classical romantic visions and concepts. He needed to work on heroes which should qualitatively be different from the traditional romantic ones. Another objective of the study is to provide some significant definitions of the Byronic hero, his major characteristics, his spirits and flaws. As a result, the study found that Lord Byron has created a new type of romantic hero which later would be called the ‘Byronic hero’. It also revealed how far the Byronic hero was ready to risk his life, his estate, his pedigree to rescue others with the major concern to provide them with freedom and justice. Key words : : Byronic hero, characteristics, definitions, Literature, romanticism

Out of time: fantasising the French romantic hero in the Netflix era

ABSTRACT Netflix’s globally oriented French products are commercially bound to negotiate between producing locally legible and internationally acceptable gender types. This article spotlights variations in representing the French romantic hero – traditionally a gallant séducteur – to a global audience hypersensitive to notions of toxic masculinity in two post-#MeToo Netflix Original French romantic comedy narratives: the series Plan cœur/The Hook-Up Plan (2018–2021) and the film Je ne suis pas un homme facile/I Am Not an Easy Man (Eléonore Pourriat, 2018). Noting that Netflix is now the key export channel for French romcoms, the article draws primarily on textual analysis, while also leveraging psychoanalytic and affective theories, to argue that the platform’s impetus to make French masculinity in particular more widely palatable, and (so) appeal to emergent popular feminism, has the potential to reconfigure parameters of legitimate gender norms, French and beyond.

Prometheus on Perelandra: The Inversion of the Satanic Hero in C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra

Approaching the character of Satan in A Preface to Paradise Lost, C.S. Lewis asserted that the Romantics’ admiration for Milton’s angelic rebel as a heroic figure was misplaced. It is a passing reference, but the comment revealed Lewis’s discomfort with the concept of the romantic hero. Two years later, he would continue his investigation of this archetype with his publication of Perelandra. While the way Lewis reworked facets of Miltonic’s Paradise Lost in his extra-terrestrial Garden of Eden have been well studied, the obvious sources for Lewis’s work loom so large in its scholarship that the similar reimagining of Romantic concepts and character types in which he engaged has received little attention. Yet the presence of Romantic echoes among all of the medieval allusions is quite telling. Lewis seems to make particular use of Shelly’s Prometheus Unbound, his favourite poem, in much the same way he does Paradise Lost, adapting that which he loved while ‘correcting’ that which he felt went wrong. This explores this recasting of Romantic concepts and observe Lewis’s efforts to bring the Byronic hero in line with the Christian cosmology of the Ransom trilogy, trying to paint a picture of authentically realized humanity.

Специфика реализации мотива пути-дороги в отечественном городском фэнтези

The article analyzes the implementation’s variations of the fairy-tale motif the way-road in modern domestic fantasy on the example of its urban variety, which is characterized by the obligatory presence of dual world principle (the world of reality coexists on an equal footing with the fantasy world) and the presence of a protagonist, who, like a romantic hero, feels tragic discord with the reality. It turns out that the path-road is closely connected with the folklore motif of magical escape: the hero sets off on a journey around the city, because he tries to escape from the fantastic creatures pursuing him, eager not only to deprive him of supernatural abilities, but also to kill him, however in the final, when the protagonist reaches the end point of his path, he defeats all antagonists. The author decides, that the path-road motif is equated to a quest and determines the entire plot of urban fantasy: the protagonist moves along a path limited by the boundaries of urban space, which becomes an initiation for him, allowing him to improve himself both ethically and in supernatural skills. It is established that urban fantasy can be partially attributed to a variety of adventure novel, but there is a fundamental difference between them: in an adventure novel, the focus is on the fact of the adventures themselves, their presence, while in urban fantasy, on the fact of the transformation experienced by the hero in the process of passing tests.

Ethan Frome: Naturalism’s “Scapegoat,” or Romantic Hero?

Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome is usually but inaccurately classified as Naturalistic. Naturalistic works typically feature characters constrained by their environment, social circumstances, or personal struggles. This article rejects that characterization. Careful application of the naturalistic model indicates that the novel’s major elements of setting, structure, characters, and theme do not fit that model. Close reading and careful analysis provide convincing evidence that the novel’s focus is the transformative power of love. This study hypothesizes that such a focus places the novel within the Romantic genre. Further close analysis indicates that the characters’ other-worldly, idealized love leads to an outcome more tragic than death, and that these consequences represent love’s consummate triumph. The study concludes that Ethan Frome therefore incorporates one of the highest values of Western society, regularly embodied in its religions and its art.

Odraz ľudovej piesne v ponáškach Janka Kráľa

Slovak folklore played an important role in the Slovak national revival movement in the 19th century. Incorporating the elements of folk songs in poetry meant simplifying the language, substituting classical verses for syllabic ones, thus proceeding to a new romantic era. The authors were able to introduce and disseminate revolutionary ideas to common people in a comprehensible way. That is how “ponáška” - a syncretic genre of poems resembling to folk songs - was created. The aim of this paper is to analyse the similarities and differences of Slovak folk songs and “ponášky” to describe this syncretic genre more closely. Initially, basic features of Slovak folk songs - parallelism, natural imagery, typical repetitive motifs, importance of form - are presented. These are then identified in the interpretations of poems “Žíznim, mám studničku”, “Krajinská pieseň” and “Verše” by a major author of the syncretic genre: Janko Kráľ. The analysed texts resemble authentic folk songs both in form and meaning. The author uses isosyllabic verses to fit folk song melodies; incorporates traditional natural and social motifs; and most of all, applies the parallelism at all levels (form, content, and composition). On the other hand, the unique author's contribution in distinguishing ponáška from folk song is manifested in various means. He reflects the historical and social context in strong agitating images of “Krajinská pieseň”; or uses the theme of un-freedom, which is atypical for folklore. However, the crucial difference is a result of a perceptible and heartfelt dive into the lyrical subject, who experiences feelings typical of a romantic hero, such as loneliness, misunderstanding, even conflict.

Struggle and Lonely Sorrow in Byron s Romanticism (Based on Poems the Giaour , the Corsair , the Bride of Abydos and the Prisoner of Chillon )

The article mentions the public-social and literary-aesthetic problems of "Oriental Poems" by George Gordon Byron, one of the most prominent representatives of English revolutionary romanticism in world literature. The author gives a scientific interpretation of Byron's poems "Giaour", "Corsair", "the Bride of Abydos" and "The Prisoner of Chillon" and studies the literary-aesthetic and public-social problems of the poet's revolutionary romanticism. At the beginning and middle of the 20th century, scientific interest in Byron's literary heritage increased in Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and the poet's "Oriental Poems" were translated into Turkish and Azerbaijani. The author notes that Abdulla Jovdat Bey sent the poem “The Prisoner of Chillon” translated from Byron in 1906 as a gift to his close friend Ali Bey Huseynzadeh. Ali bey Huseynzadeh, in his article “English Poetry in Turkish” and the “Prisoner of the Chillon”, published in the newspaper “Hayat”, highly appreciated the translation skills of Abdullah Jovdat Bey and spoke about the ideological and aesthetic merits of the poem. The analysis involved translations of three lines from Byron's “Oriental poems” into Azerbaijani by Novruz Ganjali, Bakhtiyar Vahabzadeh and other poets. The struggle and lonely grief of the romantic heroes of the poet has also been characterized in the article. The “Oriental poems" reflectes the vices committed by Eastern despotism. Militant and romantic, the lonely heroes of Byron's poetry reflect the characteristic features of English revolutionary romanticism and rise to the level of the "Byronic hero". Keywords: "Oriental poems", "Byronic hero", linear translation, lonely hero, progressive romantics, despotism

Rivers and Bogs: Slow Protests in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko

In Aphra Behn’s 1688 novel Oroonoko, the title character owns enslaved people when he is in Africa and is himself enslaved and forced to migrate to and labor in the Suriname River watershed. The narrator praises his European-ness and denies the value of his African-ness, framing the failure of his shipboard and plantation protests as the fate of a tragic romance hero. But the narrator’s perspective on Oroonoko is only one dimension of this story: the narrative weaves and folds and digresses like a river winding down to the sea, moving through locations that are neither fully wet nor dry, salt nor fresh. Both formally and scenically, Behn challenges readers to move slowly, to resist the desire for narrative and environmental control, to embrace the uncertainty, danger, and shifting, undefined nature of the coastal ecotone. She holds before us the deeply violent consequences of European heroic romance as it drives Oroonoko’s and the narrator’s actions in the Atlantic world and invites us to imagine environments and circuitous logics that protest that violence. Attending to the novel’s coastal-ness enables resistance to dominant English seventeenth-century ideologies about racial, gendered, and species mastery.

PAMIĘĆ O KOZAKU UKRAIŃSKIM W UJĘCIU LITERACKIM ROMANTYKÓW UKRAIŃSKICH I POLSKICH

PAMIĘĆ O KOZAKU UKRAIŃSKIM W UJĘCIU LITERACKIM ROMANTYKÓW UKRAIŃSKICH I POLSKICH

"ЧУДАК" НА СЦЕНЕ И ДРАМАТУРГ В ЖИЗНИ: СОЦИОКУЛЬТУРНЫЙ КОНТЕКСТ РОЖДАЮЩЕГОСЯ СТАЛИНИЗМА

The article deals with Afinogenov’s play “Weirdo” in the context of the emerging Stalinism, which at the moment of its formation demanded not revolutionary enthusiasm, which was much spoken and written about, but direct submission to the orders of the party apparatus – that is how the conflict appears in the play, and in the Soviet society. Afinogenov himself experienced the difficult moods of a transitional time, when the liberal era of the NEP was gone and the era of civil war was returning. The playwright portrayed the enthusiastic Boris Volgin, whom he saw as his friend Boris Igritsky, and simultaneously wrote to him about the state of complete political uncertainty, in which perspective and faith in the future are lost. As a playwright of the “general line” Afinogenov suppressed his critical mood in an attempt to correspond to the new times, which, in turn, demanded not a romantic hero, but a class struggle with any “exit” beyond the full and unconditional subordination to the decisions of the Party

Traditions of classical literature in the film “Brother” by Alexei Balabanov

Alexei Balabanov’s film “Brother” is an integral part of modern Russian culture. An analysis of the audience’s reception of the film suggests that “Brother” is not just a mass action movie. A close look reveals that Balabanov’s film combines elements of pop-culture product and intellectual cinema. The article for the first time offers a holistic analysis of the film “Brother”. Balabanov uses a complex system of repetitions at the level of a phrase, visual image, situation. This allows the author to build a complicated system of motifs that are associated with some literary traditions of classical literature. We are talking primarily about the tradition of the Petersburg text and about a complex of themes and plots that go back to romanticism. The angle from which one should look at the film is indicated by the introduction of an important character named Hoffmann, who warns the protagonist that the city is a terrible force. Motive analysis and intertextual analysis leads to the following conclusions. The plot of “Brother” can be read as a story about a young man Danila, who betrays his ideal (love of music), unable to withstand the temptation of money and power, and pays for this: he turns into his evil doppelganger — his brother Victor. The plot, seemingly tied to a specific socio-historical reality, turns into a potentially eternal plot about a confused romantic hero who changes his ideals after falling into the mythologized space of St Petersburg that fools him.

The Swedish Brigade: From National Romantic Heroes to European Counter-Revolutionaries?

This article analyzes the character and development of the Swedish Brigade, a small military volunteer unit in the Finnish Civil War of 1918, in the context of the European counter-revolution. Volunteers in the various civil wars following the Russian Revolution have been studied extensively before, but have largely focused on countries that participated in the First World War. This case study of the ‘White’ Swedish Brigade aims to highlight the importance of volunteers from neutral countries, and their specific role in the transnational counter-revolutionary movement. The Brigade was an ostensibly politically neutral unit, with a socially heterogeneous make-up. Heavily supported by the Swedish right-wing media, it was widely romanticized as a heroic effort to restore Sweden's honour by supporting the Finnish fight against the old Russian enemy, and defending the former Swedish province as a bulwark of Swedish culture, law and order against barbarism. While its political culture was steeped in a romanticized Finno-Swedish history and culture, shared by many of the volunteers, the brigadiers were quickly confronted by the realities of poor equipment and organization, political division, and above all an exceptionally brutal civil war and the morally degrading violence it entailed. Brigade archive documents and memoirs show that this quickly changed the character of the actual volunteer unit to contrast heavily with the right-wing press's romantic imagination. Additionally, through contacts with the Finnish and German military, and in the face of a Left Swedish critique of the Brigade as reactionary butchers, many of the volunteers reconceptualized their role in the civil war, not as one of heroic and historical significance for Sweden, but as part of a vicious European struggle against Bolshevism. This seems to some extent confirmed by their post-war history, which raises interesting questions about these volunteers’ roles among the new Right of interwar Europe.

Ideological and Artistic Originality of French Children’s Literature of 19th Century: E. d’Hervilly “Adventures of a Prehistoric Boy”

The article deals with the theme of the formation of children’s literature in the 19th century in France. The relevance of the study is due to the constant interest of both researchers and a wide range of readers in children’s literature as a source of reflection of the socio-cultural characteristics of a particular society. The story of the little-known French romantic writer Ernest d’Hervilli “The Adventures of a Prehistoric Boy”, which has not previously become the object of a special analysis, is examined. The author of the article reveals a pronounced ideological originality of the story, its compositional and artistic features. The nusualness of the reference of the French writer to the late Paleolithic era is emphasized. The author of the article believes that the main character is one of the first examples of a primitive romantic hero. It is argued that thanks to the story of Ernest d’Hervilli in the literature of the 19th century, the theme of the prehistoric past of human, interest in primitive society and the psychology of the maturation of a teenager in a certain period of history appears. It is shown that at the compositional level, taking into account the adventurous register, the author draws attention to the little-known pages of the history of mankind and, thanks to various means of verbal expression, creates a realistic picture of the life, nature and life of the Cro-Magnons.

THE IMAGE OF THE VAMPIRE IN WORLD AND LATVIAN LITERATURE

The theme of the article is evolution of the popular folklore image of the vampire in world literature. From the monster of folk narrative the image of the vampire entered literary culture at the beginning of the 19th century when writers of the age of Romanticism sought material for their work in folk tales. The novel “Dracula” written by the Irish writer Bram Stoker set a large part of attributes for the image of the vampire in readers’ consciousness. It became a turning point in the evolution of the vampire. In the following years the vampire was a popular symbol in the 20th century literary experiments; however, it gained a considerable fame with a more rapid spreading of the cinema. Later, until the second half of the 20th century the image of the vampire was degraded to the level of a cheap horror monster. In the 1970s it was revived by the American writer Anne Rice in her series of novels “The Vampire Chronicles”. For the time being the latest tendency in the evolution of the vampire is represented by the novels of paranormal romance subgenre intended for young adults. In these novels the vampire has assumed the aura of a romantic character. In comparison with world literature vampire has not won a massive popularity in the novels of Latvian writers; however, some authors have occasionally used this image in their works. The image of the vampire appears in Latvian literature as a classical blood sucking monster, as a political symbol and also as a romantic hero in fantasy and adventure novels for young people. As we can see, the presence of the image of the vampire in Latvian writing reflects the same tendencies that have dominated world literature on a smaller scale. For this reason Latvian literature can be considered to be an interesting testimony of literary connections in the world.

Love, Honor and Race in Don Alvaro or the Force of Fate by Duque De Rivas

This article aims to analyze the themes of love, honor and race in the Spanish romantic drama Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sino (Don Alvaro or The Force of Fate) written by Duque de Rivas in 1835. First, a general overview on historical and philosophical background of Europe is provided to help the understanding of the arrival of the Romantic Movement in Spain and the main aspects thereof. Then, a brief information is given about the author and finally, the work is analyzed on the basis of the three abovementioned themes and the results are specified. The analysis is based on the main characteristics of the Romantic Movement and its reflections on the Spanish society as well as on human relations. The text is woven through the love story of the main character, which is a romantic hero trying to integrate into the Spanish society with his unknown origins. The drama is considered as the triumph of romanticism in Spain and is significant in terms of providing insights into the 19th century Spanish society.