Romantic Hero Research Articles

«ТАЙНЫ ДУШИ» И ДЕЙСТВИТЕЛЬНОСТЬ В ЛИРИКЕ Я. П. ПОЛОНСКОГО

The article deals with the originality of the romantic method of Ya. P. Polonsky: the formation of the image of the lyrical hero in the poet’s early poetry in the spirit of romantic subjectivism of the early 19th century and its transformation in mature poetry, the refraction of the psychological personality of the creator in his work, the consonance of the image of the romantic hero to the mental and psychological constitution of Polonsky-the human. The artistic realization of the romantic worldview of Ya. P. Polonsky is viewed: in his appeal to fantasy plots, to the «parallelism» of the world of nature and the inner life of man, the intertwining of the «existential», «real» with the ideal-romantic in «dream» poetry, in the setting of the theme «Poet and poetry» is indicated. The “off-text image” of Polonsky in his early lyrics presented to the readers as a detached romantic. At the same time, the poetry of Ya. P. Polonsky was characterized by the effect of «accessibility», openness of the poet’s peace of mind. Over time, the poet forms his own individually outlined world of «magic» romanticism, conformable to his psychological state, mood that was recognized byhis contemporaries. In setting the theme «poet and poetry» the canons of the romantic tradition are observed: the poet – prophet is unnecessary among people, but is proud of his solitude, serving the highest ideals. But for Polonsky it is not an abstract solitude. It is a constant and depressing understanding of one’s own disorder with a conscious talent, a humiliating material dependence on people who are unfamiliar and unavailable to bursts of inspiration and who “condescend” to the poet. The analysis involved the lyrics of Ya. P. Polonsky of different years, diaries, memoirs, contemporary poetry criticism, periodicals and archival documents.

Fictions of Obligation: Contract and Romance in Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn

This essay reads the short romances of Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn as complex responses to contract-based theories of obligation and the model of the political subject who enters into relationships of willing submission. Cavendish and Behn take up the subject of women’s contracts and obligations within the generic constraints of romance, but their romances belie the fiction of women freely and happily contracting with their romance heroes. Far from instancing willing submission, Cavendish’s heroines actively engage with law and go to war to subdue men who prove bad contractors and to model new forms of obligation. Behn’s romances, in contrast, teem with women who are bad contractors and whose flagrant violations of propriety and conjugality pose a sardonic challenge to conventional definitions of women’s obligations. Together, their works trouble the fiction of the willingly bound woman and attest to the diminishing power of romance to model women’s obligations in a time of continuing political crisis.

Corto Maltese and the process of endless semiosis

ABSTRACT Corto Maltese from the eponymous series is usually regarded as one of the last great romantic heroes in comic books. This qualification is related to his persistent idealism. In various episodes, he typically ends up renouncing the material gains (e. g. a treasure he is after) in the name of friendship and solidarity. Corto Maltese consequently appears as a politically subversive figure, but in fact romantic individualism is an ambivalent ideology, which has developed together with – and not in opposition to – the dominant social-economic relations. The author of the article therefore proposes that we understand the subversive essence of the Corto Maltese series slightly differently, from the perspective of Deleuze-Guattarian schizophrenia, where stable structures of meaning are replaced by the world of unpredictable transitions. The analysis of the series points out the most important elements that could be understood as examples of endless semiosis.

A Modern-Day Romantic: The Romantic Sublime in Hayao Miyazaki’s Creative Philosophy

ABSTRACTThis article explores how the concept of the Romantic sublime is presented within the filmography of acclaimed animator Hayao Miyazaki (1941-). Fronting the Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli from 1985, Miyazaki has developed into an auteur figure with his films attracting considerable attention from scholars. The films of Hayao Miyazaki are characterized by a consistent creative philosophy, a philosophy that this article contends is profoundly shaped by the esthetic, philosophical, and artistic traditions of the European Romantic movement. Miyazaki’s engagement with Romanticism can be characterized by his interpretation of the Romantic sublime, a concept inherently linked to the traditions of the Romantic hero, the magical imagination, and the natural realm. This engagement with Romantic ideals is illustrated in this article by analyzing the thematic and visual elements of Miyazaki’s films, highlighting how these particular films reflect, and embody, particular Romantic ideals. In studying these films through a conceptual framework of the Romantic sublime, this article provides a deeper insight into Hayao Miyazaki’s creative philosophy.

ЛІТЕРАТУРНІ СЮЖЕТИ В ТВОРАХ Е. ДЕЛАКРУА – “ЗАГИБЕЛЬ КОРАБЛЯ ДОН-ЖУАНА” ТА “ПІСЛЯ КОРАБЕЛЬНОЇ АВАРІЇ”

In this article, we have studied problems associated with features of the painting development in the Romantic era. We have highlighted questions on the interrelationship between literature and painting and considered new trends in the development of the French painting in the first half of the 19th century. Artists of this era, in particular E. Delacroix, searched for new subjects actively by finding interesting themes in works of the world literature. E. Delacroix was inspired by works of Dante, L. Ariosto, T. Tasso, W. Shakespeare, J. Goethe, G. Byron, F. R. de Chateaubriand, W. Scott etc. Among them we should make the English writer G. Byron stand out: His character personified the romantic ideal of the whole era and his heroic life became a role model for young generation. In Byron’s works Eugène Delacroix was searching for new themes and his romantic hero and every time finding the relevant ways for his artistic solution system. Е. Delacroix’s works show us the integrity of romantic ideas clearly and the close mutual influence of the Western European literature and French painting allows speaking about the uniqueness of this era.

Lukács et le roman : remembrements et perspectives

Lukács was the first heir of his early works, and in particular The Theory of the Novel. This is evidenced by the “resumption” of his works on the novel during the 1930s when he stayed in Moscow, where he described the novel as a bourgeois epic. This resumption shows the continuity of his reflection and at the same time constitutes a decisive reformulation within the framework of “great realism” which is closely linked to an ontological perspective opened by the discovery and reading of Marx's Manuscripts of 1844. In the plurality of his figurations, the hero is also a herald, antique or romantic hero, revolutionary proletariat and peculiarity (Besonderheit). It embodies the power of subversion of the reification of the world, which allows a rapprochement with Pasolini, especially Teorema.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEATER IN THE CHECHENO-INGUSH ASSR IN THE 40―60S’ OF THE XX CENTURY

The selection of the topic for publication is brought into focus by the decree of the President of the Russian Federation on the announcement of 2019 as the Year of Theater, as well as preparation for the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Germany. The relevance of the choice of theatrical culture of the Chechen Republic in the object of study is also related to its lack of information on this topic. The study analyzes the activities of republican theaters in military conditions; reconstruction of the basic principles and methods of functioning of the Chechen-Ingush theaters in the years of the restoration of autonomy and the “ottepel” (thaw) of the 1960s’.In the years of the Great Patriotic War, the Chechen-Ingush Theater was rebuilt in a military manner and confided to barracks. The propaganda teams that spoke in all corners of the republic, in hospitals and military units, in field camps and at enterprises raised the fighting spirit of the soldiers. Many artists of the republic went to the front and fought against the enemy in arms.The development of the Chechen-Ingush culture in the second half of the 1950s’ – 1960s’ of the XX century occurred in the conditions of democratization of life of the Soviet society, the restoration of the republic’s autonomy, the atmosphere of freedom of creativity. In the mid-1960s’, with the arrival of students of the academic M. Soltsayev and R. Khakishev’s Leningrad school, the repertoire of the Chechen-Ingush theater is replenished with works of heroic romance and high poetry. The performances of Russian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Ossetian, Balkarian, Dagestan and other authors appear. In the 60s’ of the XX century, Chechen-Ingush Theater was among the ten best national theaters of the Soviet Union.The methodological basis of the research is the dialectical approach, which allowed studying the theatrical art of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR on the principles of historicism, objectivity and comprehensive study of the subject. The logical method made it possible to analyze the sources, to establish the degree of knowledge of the problem in the national historiography, to determine the purpose and objectives. With the help of the historical-genetic method, the theatrical life of the republic during the war, the restoration of autonomy and the “ottepel” of the 1960s’ is revealed.

ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЯ РОМАНТИЧЕСКИХ МОТИВОВ В РОМАНЕ ПАТРИКА ЗЮСКИНДА «ПАРФЮМЕР»

The article attempts to highlight the main romantic motifs that the modern German writer Patrick Süskind used in his novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Symbolic for the contemporary cultural context figurative semantic constants (genius, loneliness, rejection, godlessness, etc.) are assigned to such motifs. The ways and means of rethinking romantic motifs in a modern novel are determined, the specifics of their transformation in a postmodern text is analyzed. The similarities between the work of Süskind and popular upbringing novels in the Enlightenment are noted: the main character of the modern German writer goes through the thorny path of formation, he improves his gift, thanks to which he hopes to change the world, subjugate other people to himself. The parody evangelical allusions that contribute to the deconstruction of the romantic figure of an unrecognized genius are analyzed. The postmodernist writer debunks and ridicules the hero, turning the imaginary king into a jester. Unlike the romantic hero, whose main function was to broadcast the divine will, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille refutes the truth of the Absolute by his existence and the ingenious gift inherent in him by nature. The article concludes that Süskind refers to a stable romantic model, implemented many times in literature and art, setting his own accents in his own way, bringing the romantic structure to its limit. This model goes through the second stage in its development, according to the Hegel’s triad, namely, the negation of negation, when any phenomenon turns into its opposite. Refuting the well-known Pushkin’s claim that “genius and villainy are two incompatible things”, the writer at the same time comes to the conclusion that evil, even without meeting a worthy opponent, is destructive to himself. We see further research prospects in the study of the novel in the context of the work of Süskind and modern German-language literature from the point of view of transforming the romantic tradition in the post-modern text.

Seattle Sightings: The Seattle International Film Festival

Reviewed by: Seattle Sightings: The Seattle International Film Festival Joan M. West Seattle Sightings: The Seattle International Film Festival, 2018. <siff.net/festival>. SIFF 44 screened some 250 features over twenty-five days in eleven main theaters (five for the entire time; six in Seattle neighborhoods and nearby communities for shorter periods). France, Belgium, Quebec, Morocco, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Benin supplied this year's selection of twenty-seven films with French connections. Interesting statistics: eight of this group accounted for forty César nominations. 30% of the group were inspired by a literary source (memoire, comic strip, graphic novel, novel). 37% of them were made by female directors, and the same percentage were debut films. Several SIFF French selections have already entered American distribution. Gauguin, voyage de Tahiti (Édouard Deluc) and Le redoutable (aka Godard, mon amour) (Michel Hazanavicius) craft portraits of two artistic giants—social rebels both—who upended the norms of their chosen forms of creative expression. Beyond the art, both directors address the destruction caused in human terms by such narcissistic prodigies. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire's Une prière avant l'aube, based on English boxer Billy Moore's memoir of his imprisonment in Thailand for drugs, yields a story of redemption after copious blood and violence. Along the same vein, Coralie Fargeat's debut film Revenge was the opening weekend midnighter. Attendees had mixed reactions: was this a feminist rape-revenge tale, a MeToo call to stand up against sexism, or just another example of New French Extremity horror (done by a woman)? Claire Denis's Un beau soleil intérieur also divided viewers: take this tale of search for true love seriously or cynically? In either case, searcher Juliette Binoche and voyant Gérard Depardieu earned plaudits. Michael R. Roskam's Le fidèle pairs Matthias Schoenaerts as a bank robber with Adèle Exarchopoulos as the professional-racecar-driver [End Page 205] daughter of a crime-connected businessman. These two bond in an irresistible, fateful passion. Even if set realistically in the criminal milieu of late 1990s Belgium and a tale drawing on conventions of the polar français and American film noir, the outlaw robber-lover's final, tragic gesture evokes that of a Romantic hero or a faithful medieval knight. Always eagerly anticipated, SIFF's archival program contained restorations of two French classics: Luis Buñuel's celebrated Belle de jour (1967) and Jean Renoir's Le crime de Monsieur Lange (1936), which the poet Jacques Prévert helped script. French schools from the Seattle area helped programming for young viewers by sponsoring Belle et Sébastien 3, le dernier chapitre (Clovis Cornillac) and two animated works. Le grand méchant renard et autres contes (Benjamin Renner, Patrick Imbert), 2018 Best Animation César, imagines a fox hatching a clutch of chicken eggs resulting in chicks who take him for their mother. Comical escapades ensue that keep "maman renard" on the run! The Franco-Belgian Zombillénium (Arthur de Pins, Alexis Ducord) animates De Pins's graphic novel about an amusement park run by real monsters pretending to be fake vampires, zombies, etc. Behind the stunning visual entertainment—tattooed teen apprentice witch Gretchen on her skateboard-broomstick, for instance—the directors include doses of social commentary, from consumerism to social caste and workers' rights, from inattentive parents and unreasonable teachers to pop culture references. Several character-centered dramas deserve mention. Sashinka (Kristina Wagen-bauer) and Le petit paysan (Hubert Charuel) share several points in common. They are debut features grounded in autobiographical elements drawn from family experiences and feature profoundly interesting, if imperfect central figures. Québecoise Wagenbauer depicts a memorable, bittersweet mother-daughter relationship. The extroverted, emotionally-needy mother, who emigrated from Russia under the illusion of furthering her singing career, re-enters her partially estranged daughter's life like a hurricane. The daughter, a singer on the eve of her big break, is sorely tasked to weather this storm. Charuel's picture (Best Actor and First Film Césars), focuses on thirty-year-old bachelor Pierre, who has taken over his parents' traditional dairy operation. Documentary-like details shot on the director's own family farm...

Comic Irony in Harold en Italie

Berlioz’s Harold en Italie (1834) is a strange, ambiguously programmatic symphony that refers explicitly to both Beethoven and Byron—two of the lions of Romantic heroism—in ways that are not always straightforward. I argue that Berlioz’s evocation of Romantic heroism is an ironic commentary on the impossibility of artistic freedom in bourgeois society. I also identify a new literary connection to the symphony: the comically ironic short stories and journalism written by Berlioz’s friend Théophile Gautier. Many have argued that both the Byronic archetype and the nineteenth-century symphony became vehicles for exploring the high ideal of Romantic heroism. Hearing Harold as humorously ironic enables insights into Berlioz’s experience of his cultural moment and alternative readings of the impact of Byronic and Beethovenian heroism on subsequent generations of artists, while also opening possibilities for exploring narrative as a hermeneutic for musical analysis.

A Homeland divided in Squares: Joaquim de Vasconcelos (1849-1936) Identity Panels

Considered the founder of Art History in Portugal with a rigorous method, Joaquim de Vasconcelos was also a Musicologist, Museologist, Teacher and Professor, Art Critic and a “champion” of visual transmission “systems” like Photography and Drawing. His capacity for critical analysis, his anarchic enthusiasm for various areas of knowledge, providing ways of thinking and acting when almost everything was still undone, impose him as an anti-mythical and unique character who created his own legend, a myth and a romantic hero, a master of himself far beyond from Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) or Giambattista Cavalcaselle (1819-1897) just to point out two of the masters that he admired. Homeland squares are not only a way of referring how tiles are a very important part of the Portuguese identity puzzle, but also a way of alluding to the geometry of parallels and meridians that Joaquim de Vasconcelos drew when trying to identify the Art in Portugal.

Leonidas Yerovi: personaje novelable y héroe romántico

Leonidas N. Yerovi (1881-1917) es uno de los escritores peruanos más importantes del Modernismo. Su amplia obra, aún poco estudiada, abarca artículos periodísticos, poesía, crónica y teatro. En el presente artículo, se estudia una de las líneas de investigación que ha seguido la crítica literaria al momento de investigar a Leonidas Yerovi como autor: las características literarias de su vida. Con miras a ese objetivo, se revisan aspectos importantes desde los cuales se ha interpretado su biografía: su muerte trágica, la bohemia y la amargura detrás de su risa. Se demuestra, de esta forma, los procesos por los cuales se ha buscado ficcionalizar a este personaje histórico y convertirlo literariamente en un héroe romántico, como manera de ejercer la crítica y la creación literarias.

The Ironic-Romantic Hero in Frazier’s Cold Mountain and Roth’s Nemesis

The present research discusses postmodernism’s subversion of the notion of romance, particularly the romantic hero figure. It puts forward irony as the vehicle for shifting the traditional stature of the hero, and his successful errand towards the anti-hero as the apotheosis of doom and failure. The paper suggests history’s force of abruptness as undeniable in the unsuccessful quest of the hero through the shattering historical events Charles Frazier (1950-) and Philip Roth (1933-) create in their modern novels, Cold Mountain (1997) and Nemesis (2010). It furthermore gets in-depth within the romantic psyche of both heroes to get across that their ‘consciousness’ is, in fact, mythical and not historical. Absence of historical consciousness in these characters, it is explained, participates considerably in the collapse which gets them eventually. Even the pastoral round which their aspiration hovers becomes a site for death and paralysis instead of the rejuvenation they sought after passionately. The larger canvas is then that of strife between romance and history, dream and reality drawn by the postmodern spirit inclination towards the double and the upturned.

Il surfista, eroe romantico nell’Australia contemporanea. Un’analisi etnografica a partire dal caso della Gold Coast

Through the ethnographic analysis of surf culture on the Gold Coast, this paper examines the relevance of the surfer’s image in Australia’s representations. In fact, surfing epitomises some of the cultural traits that symbolically define the national identity such as the relation with nature, the beach, fitness and “larrikism”. Among these qualities, bravery represents the cornerstone of an exclusive and mainly manly — and white — sporting culture. As a seductive echo of the Romantic hero, surfers embody the ideal appeal of “fun” and freedom, as well as the competitive attitude of sport and the athletic allure of youth; with no contradictions, they also exemplify the individualism of the “neoliberalist ethos”, a virile kind of brotherhood and the discriminating dynamics which have characterized the history of sport in Australia. The Gold Coast is an ideal context to observe these processes in fieri , for its role in promoting competitive surfing and surfers’ representations in the Country.

Lincoln and the Politics of the “Towering Genius”

This article examines Lincoln’s “Lyceum Speech” with its concern for the “towering genius” in politics against the backdrop of the recent rise of populism and demagoguery. Lincoln’s concern was with a new kind of problem, namely, the appearance of the romantic hero in politics, a figure presaged in the writings of Emerson and Thoreau and that took the form of radical conscience politics. The model of the transcendental hero was John Brown, whose abolitionist impulse put individual conscience above the law. I contrast the transcendental hero to Lincoln’s conception of constitutional statecraft as based on an ethic of moderation and self-restraint. The article concludes with a contrast between Lincoln and Tocqueville’s worry that the American democratic republic would be characterized by the absence of individuals of grand ambition. Lincoln, I argue, is a better guide to the politics of the contemporary moment.

Rewriting the Faust Myth within Romantic Dualism of Existence in Byrons Manfred and Cain

Among the myths revived and rewritten by the romantics Prometheus, Orpheus, Psyche, Apollo, and so on the myth of Faust would provide one of the most congenial ways of textualization of the romantic rise of individualism, in general, and of some of its individual thematic perspectives, such as dualism of existence, escapism, and rebelliousness, in particular. George Gordon, Lord Byrons impressive literary masterpieces, the lyrical plays Manfred and Cain are among those works that contributed to the rise of the romantic hero in English literature by building up one of its particular as well as most interesting versions, which is known as the Byronic hero. Solitary, inadaptable, arrogant, misfit, escapist or rebellious, whatever would be the common features of the many characters that are labelled as Byronic hero, they still reveal certain distinct features and perform various deeds that allow them to be regarded as particular hypostases of the Byronic hero, among which Childe Harold, Manfred, Don Juan, Cain, and others. Among these, Manfred and Cain are at once hypostases of the Byronic hero and Faustian figures making possible the reconstruction of the Faust myth within the new attitudes and the thematic complexity of the Romantic Movement. In this respect, the present study embarks on a critical endeavour to disclose and compare the ways in which the two dramatic works revive and reshape the myth, and make it a vehicle for both romantic and, as we will see, anti-romantic literary expression.

The Piano Duet in the System of Piano Ensemble: Genre-Typological Aspects

The Piano Duet in the System of Piano Ensemble: Genre-Typological Aspects

Reworking the Bond Girl Concept in the Craig Era

:This article explores how the Bond Girl concept is deconstructed across the orphan-origin trilogy—Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall—to accommodate the rise of a new heroic model that focuses on strength and resilience. The qualities associated with the Bond Girl are distributed across at least two characters per film. This opens up space for outlier women—Vesper Lynd, Camille Montes, M—and adjustments to the gender politics of the franchise. The archetype is reintroduced in Spectre as Dr. Madeleine Swann can be read as a composite of previous Bond Girls. The film also reworks the narratives associated with the outlier women in the Craig era, bringing their qualities into the Bond Girl fold while reinstituting a phallocentric order in the franchise through the (re)positioning of Bond as a romantic hero.

War Isn’t the Only Hell: A New Reading of World War I American Literature by Keith Gandal

Reviewed by: War Isn’t the Only Hell: A New Reading of World War I American Literature by Keith Gandal Aaron Shaheen GANDAL, KEITH. War Isn’t the Only Hell: A New Reading of World War I American Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. 227 pp. $44.95 hardcover; $44.95 e-book. In War Isn’t the Only Hell, Keith Gandal sets himself the ambitious task of reframing the way scholars and the reading public regard World War I–era American literature. He contends that the prevailing narrative understands these works, most of which are from the so-called Lost Generation of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as “an outcry over the horrors of modern warfare and a revulsion from the patriotic propaganda about a moral crusade and great adventure that [End Page 590] the government mobilized to promote the war and the draft” (9). Rather, the works of these and other writers should be understood as a response to the Selective Service Act of 1917, which brought an unprecedented level of meritocracy to the enlistment and promotion for men entering the Great War. Since merit was such a pervasive force in mobilization, critics will derive a deeper understanding and appreciation of war-related literature by grouping it into at least three major categories of authors: noncombatant males, female participants and nonparticipants, and male combatants. Writers in all of these groups wrote about the shock and anxiety of confronting “new systems of power and publicity” that controlled and categorized men “not on the traditional basis of who they are or where they come from—their families, classes, and ethnicities—but on what they do and what they are deemed able to do” (10). In the noncombatant section that opens the book, Gandal argues that because Hemingway, Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, E. E. Cummings, and William Faulkner did not actually fight in the war, their writings about it reflect a feeling of masculine inadequacy. Thus, in Faulkner’s Soldiers’ Pay, Cadet Lowe, who is stationed stateside for the war’s duration, envies Donald Mahon for the debilitating, yet masculinity-affirming, wounds he received in battle. In Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned, the well-educated and upper-middle-class Anthony Patch never makes it past stateside boot camp, where his love interest in Dot lands him in military jail. In a stand-alone chapter on The Enormous Room, Gandal makes the compelling case that what makes E. E. Cummings accept his imprisonment for having been suspected of sedition is that his jail is run not by the meritocratized American army, but by the French army, which “does not assess each [prisoner] separately or distinguish between them on the basis of individual attributes and behaviors” (72). Gandal then argues that A Farewell to Arms revises the bitterness found in Hemingway’s earlier war fiction, “A Very Short Story” and The Sun Also Rises, which depict characters whose wounds are either symbolically or literally emasculating. In Farewell, Gandal argues, Frederic Henry may lose Catherine tragically in childbirth, but in escaping with her to Switzerland beforehand, he gets the heroic romance denied him (or his creator) as an ambulance driver. The subsequent section of chapters on female writers begins with a cogent reading of Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” arguing that wartime attitudes toward meritocracy turned women—even those critical of the war effort—into unwitting supporters of a martial masculinity. In the following chapter, Gandal explains how Ellen La Motte’s nursing memoir War’s Waste decries the inadequacies she found among medical personnel who lacked the training and professional experience she had received. Willa Cather’s Pulitzer-winning novel One of Ours, which is discussed alongside La Motte’s memoir, demonstrates the opportunities the military makes available to men from the working classes and obscure rural districts. Gandal’s most insightful readings are those of the novels by combatant authors. Thomas Boyd’s Through the Wheat shows the dark side of meritocracy as Hicks’s talents and abilities in the ranks eventually bring him to the point of soul-deadening battle fatigue. In Laurence Stallings’s Plumes, Richard Plume feels self-conscious about...

The Ironic-Romantic Hero in Frazier's Cold Mountain and Roth's Nemesis

The present research discusses postmodernism’s subversion of the notion of romance, particularly the romantic hero figure. It puts forward irony as the vehicle for shifting the traditional stature of the hero, and his successful errand towards the anti-hero as the apotheosis of doom and failure. The paper suggests history’s force of abruptness as undeniable in the unsuccessful quest of the hero through the shattering historical events Charles Frazier (1950-) and Philip Roth (1933-) create in their modern novels, Cold Mountain (1997) and Nemesis (2010). It furthermore gets in-depth within the romantic psyche of both heroes to get across that their ‘consciousness’ is, in fact, mythical and not historical. Absence of historical consciousness in these characters, it is explained, participates considerably in the collapse which gets them eventually. Even the pastoral round which their aspiration hovers becomes a site for death and paralysis instead of the rejuvenation they sought after passionately. The larger canvas is then that of strife between romance and history, dream and reality drawn by the postmodern spirit inclination towards the double and the upturned.