Heroic Tradition Research Articles

Exploring the Hero's Journey in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist

This research paper explores the quest journeys of the protagonists in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist using Joseph Campbell’s concept of the Hero’s Journey from The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The study highlights how the archetypal quest myth is presented in modern narratives. Edna Pontellier in The Awakening embarks on a journey of self-discovery, challenging societal norms and seeking personal freedom. Santiago in The Alchemist follows a more traditional hero’s path, driven by a recurring dream to find a hidden treasure, ultimately realizing that the true treasure lies within. Both journeys lead to significant personal transformations, though their outcomes differ dramatically. While Santiago's journey aligns with the classic structure of departure, initiation, and return, Edna's quest highlights the constraints of her societal context, leading to a tragic conclusion. Santiago encounters physical and spiritual trials in the desert, guided by mentors like Melchizedek and the Alchemist, and returns home enlightened. Conversely, Edna, influenced by characters like Mademoiselle Reisz and Robert Lebrun, faces internal and societal conflicts that ultimately lead her to seek freedom in death. This comparative study illustrates how modern narratives adapt and reinterpret the Hero’s Journey to explore diverse themes and experiences. It emphasizes the enduring relevance of Campbell's monomyth in understanding the complexities of human struggles and aspirations, showing how both protagonists, despite their different paths, reflect universal quests for identity and self-fulfillment. The paper underscores the impact of societal constraints on personal freedom and the varied outcomes of such quests in different cultural contexts.

AN INTIMATE DIALOGUE WITH GOD IN JOHN DONNE’S “HOLY SONNETS”: PETRARCHAN CONTEXT

The purpose of the paper is to study the images of the platonic and courtly in the protagonist’s personal relations with God in J. Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” in the context of the connection with the Petrarchan tradition. In order to accomplish this, a complex approach including elements of biographical, genealogical, typological, hermeneutic, comparative, and structural-semiotic methods of literary analysis has been used. The views of literary critics on the sources of the “Holy Sonnets” (Christian meditative practices, Bible books, traditions of English religious lyrics) have been reviewed, their connection with the Petrarchan poetic tradition has been pointed out and, in this context, one of the possible interpretations of J. Donne’s sonnet sequence has been proposed. It has been shown that three poems of the sequence – XIV, XVII and XIX – are especially important and conceptual for understanding the evolution of the protagonist’s relations with God in the “Holy Sonnets”. In the first of them, feeling his own weakness and impossibility to overcome the devil, J. Donne’s persona begs the Lord to win back his heart from the enemy, using a broad palette of military metaphors typical to the Petrarchan lyrics. However, the Lord, who in sonnets I – XIII is depicted in a Petrarchan manner as distant and completely deaf to the protagonist’s pleas, remains indifferent. In sonnet XVII, which looks similar to the lyrical texts of the “Canzoniere” dedicated to Laura’s death, a notable change in the relationship between the characters takes place. As in the Italian humanist’s poems, the life path of J. Donne’s persona finally turns to heaven after the death of his beloved, and he begins to feel that the loss of earthly love is compensated by the gaining of the Divine one. However, his further relations with God, once again, seem to be built according to the Petrarchan model, most fully described in the last text of the sequence. The sonnet XIX demonstrates all the complexity of the relationship between a human being and the Lord. J. Donne’s persona is constantly dominated by conflicting feelings and emotions, which generally correlates with Petrarchan understanding of the ambivalence of love, best shown by F. Petrarch in the sonnets CXXXII and CXXXIV. Moreover, the poetic vocabulary used by J. Donne in this poem indicates the specific character of his persona’s relations with God, which are supposed to have signs of courtly love, courtly bowing-service. It has been summed up that the protagonist’s relations with the Lord in the “Holy Sonnets” might be interpreted as generally built on the same principles that are immanent in the concept of love in the poetry of Petrarchism. The persona of the English poet, as well as the traditional hero of Petrarchan texts, also suffers from unrequited feelings, longs for reciprocity with all his heart, and, in addition, speaks in the specific metaphorical language. Even if the linguistic practice utilized by the author cannot be considered exclusively Petrarchan, since a similar rhetorical code, in which the experience of spiritual communication with the Lord was described with the help of erotic images, was widely used by the Christian mystics, the sonnet poetic structure is canonical for Petrarchan lyrical discourse and require following the established rules not only in terms of form, but also in terms of content.

I WANT a Hero: Don Juan’s Shipwreck and Byron’s WANTED Hero

The study aims to explore the complex motif of the hero in Don Juan, using Canto II as a focal point. In dialogue with traditional heroes, Byron provides a comprehensive reflection on the creation of heroes, suggesting that they are instantly devalued when conceived as either epic or recorded heroes. Both models adhere to the same logic, which is encapsulated in the rallying cry "I want a hero." In the epic-hero model, "I" signifies the poet and the nation's manipulative propaganda; in the recorded-hero model, it has evolved into the desire of the desiring-machine. The study posits that building upon the remnants of the two models he opposes, Byron proposes his own model of Don Juan—a hero genuinely seasick amid the shipwreck, serving as an embodiment of poets in a state of ennui within the 19th-century commodity culture. Through Juan, Byron offers a viable solution for literature within the commercial society.

Incredulity toward Heroism: Ackroyd as a Gallant Storyteller against the Heroic Tradition

Heroism as an unremitting subject conquers and even haunts literature as well as history. Historical and fictitious heroes are guiding spirits of human beings regardless of time and geography. Historians and writers have so sternly adhered to the ideals of heroism that this fascination has been transformed into hero worship dating back to antiquity, bringing heroism to the forefront as a metanarrative in history and literature. Particularly contributing to the undying predicament of literature caught between the ideal and the real, causes of heroism have been largely left unquestioned putting heroes in the shoes of a messiah. Peter Ackroyd (1949-), renowned for his historiographic metafictions fashioned within postmodernism, dares to challenge this unimpeached -ism in The Fall of Troy (2006). In the novel, Ackroyd rewrites the history of Troy and introduces an eccentric half-real hero, Heinrich Obermann, against celebrated heroes of history and literature. Accordingly, this paper reads heroism as a metanarrative and delineates how Ackroyd sketches an atypical hero by acting contrary to traditional heroism and heroic literary tradition in his vibrant postmodern parody, The Fall of Troy.

Formation of a Patriotic Personality in the Educational Process of a Modern School Using the Means of Cossack Pedagogics

The article is devoted to the problem of patriotic upbringing of a growing personality and the disclosure of the role of Cossack pedagogy in this process. The author carried out an analysis of the study of the problem of patriotic education in scientific literature; the educational potential of Cossack pedagogy is emphasized, as it contributes to the formation of a nationally conscious personality, ready to defend the national interests of its state if necessary.
 The purpose of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of patriotic upbringing of a growing personality based on the heroic traditions of the Ukrainian Cossacks in the conditions of modern challenges.
 In the conditions of martial law, the education of a growing personality in the glorious traditions of Ukrainian Cossacks, the popularization of Cossack ideals in society becomes especially relevant. Cossack traditions, as the embodiment of national values, renew the modern educational process, fill it with patriotic content, strengthen the philosophy of the National School of Education, the Strategy of National Patriotic Education, and contribute to the formation of the Ukrainian-centric value sphere of the individual.
 In order to encourage schoolchildren to personal growth, motivation for self-realization, a healthy lifestyle, tempering of will and character, readiness to protect their land, priority areas of work are such as: studying the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks, heroic traditions of brave knights and their popularization; organization of sports and health camps; creation of martial arts groups, etc.
 Among the features of the upbringing of a growing personality in the traditions of the Ukrainian Cossacks, we include the following: taking into account the age characteristics of students; careful selection of the content of such educational material, which will contribute to the development of the student's ability to willfully regulate his behavior, leadership qualities, perseverance, valuable national guidelines; use of the health-saving potential of the traditions of Cossack pedagogy in the realities of war (psychological support, work with stress, anxiety reduction, breathing practices, stimulation of positive emotions); reasonableness and systematicity in the application of Ukrainian Cossack traditions in the process of educational influence on students.

Military Formations of the Central Asian Military District in Defensive Battles near Moscow

The article examines the role and significance of the military formations of the Central Asian Military District that participated in the battles near Moscow during the Great Patriotic War. The novelty of the article lies in the fact that the author for the first time analyzed previously classified and therefore inaccessible archival documents and newly published materials about the heroism of the soldiers of the Central Asian Military District, who took their rightful place in the ranks of the defenders of Moscow. At the end of 1941, 21 cavalry and 16 rifle divisions, 25 rifle brigades were formed in the Central Asian Military District. The entry of the Soviet Union into World War II dramatically increased the potential of progressive forces opposing fascism, as a country with great military and economic potential, with peoples having heroic traditions, entered the war.

Традиции чувашского и калмыцкого сказочного эпоса

The article is devoted to a long-term dispute about the peculiarity / non-property of the fairy tale genre of the typical features of the heroic epos. On the basis of the historical-typological method and the method of plot analysis, the corpus of texts of the Chuvash and Kalmyk fairy tale epic has been studied. The study considers the main works devoted to this problem, compares the relevant Chuvash texts with the Kalmyk fairytale epic, points to the incorporation of the biography and exploits of the fairytale hero in the heroic epic “Dzhangar”. The author also considers such blocks of heroic matchmaking as the childlessness of parents, a miraculous origin, heroic childhood and martial arts. All these motives are inherent in both the heroic tale and the heroic epic. The heroic traditions of the Chuvash and Kalmyk fairy tale epic are expressed in ethno-cultural realities, plot, epic motifs, and artistic devices. At the same time, researchers have no reason to talk about the complete identity of the ideological and artistic complex of the heroic epic and the heroic tale. The heroic epic and fairy tale are essentially differentiated genres. Here, one can speak as much as possible about the epic nature of heroic tales, about similarities and diffusion, but not about complete identity, and, naturally, there is no need to complete the magic-heroic tale to the classical epic. The publication contributes to the substantiation of the main features of the heroic epos in the heroic tale.

Hoping for Cyborgs: Cyborg Eco-Heroism, Odd Kinships, and Hopeful Heroics in Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans

Abstract Building on Donna Haraway’s advocacy for embracing “unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles” (Trouble 4), this paper reads Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans (2013) with a focus on how, in the face of profound environmental challenges, stereotypical narratives of heroism are transformed—like in a compost pile—through cyborg-elements. The essay argues that grounding hero stories in the techno-organismal entanglements of ecosystemic crisis, yields an explicitly instable, corporeal conception of heroism in/of crisis of eco-heroism. Reading Smith’s protagonists, Fen and Daniel, as eco-heroic cyborgs in conjunction with ideals of the traditional hero’s corporeal and affective superiority creates instances of hopeful heroics in the narrative that challenge supposedly stabilizing patterns of identification in traditional discourses of American heroism. This vision of cyborg eco-heroism in Orleans makes communicable an unpredictable and instable crisisstate, generating hope as a composted affect in this eco-heroic story of oddkin. (LB)

The Phaedo as an Alternative to Tragedy

This article argues that the Phaedo is written as a new sort of story of how a hero faces death. The opening of the Phaedo makes clear that two features that Plato closely associates with tragedy, pity and lamentation, are inappropriate responses to Socrates’ impending death, and that tuchē (chance) did not affect his happiness. This is the first step in the dialogue’s sustained engagement with tragedy. For Plato, tragedy falls under the category of stories about heroes and gods. Plato wrote the Phaedo so that we would see Socrates as a philosophical hero, a replacement for traditional heroes such as Theseus or Heracles. In fact, I argue that the Phaedo meets every requirement in Republic Books 2–3 for how to tell stories about heroes and gods and so belongs to the same broad category as tragedy. Within this framework, it tells the story of how a true hero saved his companions through philosophy.

«Герой своего времени»: к характеристике образа Юрия Живаго

The aim of the study is to specify the originality of Zhivago’s image as a novelistic hero in accordance with the “personal poetics” of B. Pasternak. The author of the article analyses different aspects of the comparison of the author and the hero in the novel “Doctor Zhivago”, gives his own interpretation of the image, and determines the discrepancy between the image of Zhivago and the traditional hero of lyrical prose. The scientific novelty of the study lies in a more detailed analysis of the hero, which has led to the identification of an additional genre-generic basis of the novel “Doctor Zhivago” - drama. As a result, it has been found out that Doctor Zhivago is an independent hero, who objectifies only a certain part of B. Pasternak’s personality, and not a lyrical hero. Yuri Zhivago is not the narrator of the novel. The narration in the novel is conducted not only from Zhivago’s point of view; his storyline constantly gives way to the storylines of other characters. Despite the presence of notes in the novel by Yuri Andreevich himself (a diary and a book of poems), we do not recognize the novel whole through his creative work. The contradictory worldview and behaviour of Doctor Zhivago are not the absolute moral norm of the novel. The system of images in Doctor Zhivago most closely resembles the system of actors in a drama.

In My End Is My Beginning: Speaking Myth to the Shades Below

In My End Is My Beginning: Speaking Myth to the Shades Below Herbert Golder (bio) He chose not to answer but turned away in silence and joined the other shades of the vanished dead disappearing into darkness who knows, for all his anger he might still have spoken or I to him. (Homer, Odyssey 11.563–5) Forethoughts It started with something personal, deeply personal. Argiris’ father had had a stroke. In the hospital he developed an infection. Argiris was informed that his father was near the end. Then, a half-hour before he passed, he was tested, as a matter of routine, for Covid. He tested positive. Because he died, not from but with Covid, his body couldn’t be touched, let alone properly buried. Contaminated, he was wrapped in layers of opaque heavy plastic. Then, when officials decided the time was right, they dressed in their white hazmat suits and dumped him. Distance was maintained. Dignity was murdered. Death always stops us dead in our tracks, so to speak, and forces us to think about time, about its merciless passage. No Greek play is more thematically preoccupied, from beginning to end, with time and its passage than Sophocles’ Ajax, and how one can, by choosing certain values by which to live and—necessity being a harsh master— to die, hold out against its corrupting rush. Such reflections might occur to any of us. When they begin to stir inside a director touched by loss and in search of a vehicle, a mask [End Page 103] which as Nietzsche said every profound mind needs, they just might, if all the alchemical elements can be made to fall into place, lead to a production. A deep unrest must find articulation as a powerful vision for this to happen. In this case, the premier theater company of Greece was moved enough by this vision to mount its production in the premier theater of Greece, at Epidauros. The best actors in Greece, similarly, could feel in their bones how to make this live as theater. Having exchanged some letters with the director about this play and having been impressed by how deeply he was thinking about it, I decided to make a pilgrimage to this ancient place, to see this play to which I also had a deep connection myself, having translated it, and to revisit this sacred space in a year, moreover, that marked a significant anniversary since my last visit, one that was part of a series of events in that long-ago time that changed my life. Walking the sacred way, climbing the antique marble steps, taking one’s seat in the perfect bowl of the god’s theater, surrounded by the even more ancient forest, watching the sky slowly darken as the buzz of cicadas make the air you breath vibrate, and then, from one second to the next, evening has fallen, actors appear, and a voice clear as day breaks the silence of the night. Afterthoughts Impressions, thoughts, afterthoughts keep occurring to me, like those tremors and aftershocks one experiences after a seismic event, or the rumbling of thunder after the lightning has passed. But the main lines of my thinking, in reflection, are clear. I realize it perhaps amounts to an apostasy to characterize a Sophoclean production as Euripidean, but that is what this production was. In my view, the director’s instincts were right on target. A modern audience, even a Modern Greek audience, does not know who Ajax is. It is necessary to build the myth of Ajax for the audience, to set the stage, as it were, for its passing from the world. Sophocles lays claim to an heroic tradition; he stakes our souls on it; he possesses it so firmly he can degrade his heroes, as he ever does, so we experience what is godlike about them as they evince it in their upward [End Page 104] fight against the beasts and demons that drag them earthward. His great play ends with a reconciliation, the new man, Odysseus, paying tribute to Ajax and the ancient heroic world he embodies. Very likely produced at a time when Athens was questioning the...

Reframing Tragedy

Reframing Tragedy

Poetic Style and Innovation in Old English, Old Norse, and Old Saxon

Poetic Style and Innovation in Old English, Old Norse, and Old Saxon

The vanquished Heroes of Europe — Stefan Zweig’s Poetics of Defeat in The World of Yesterday

The ‘victor in defeat’ (Donald Daviau) has long been a key concept in Stefan Zweig scholarship. This reversal of the traditional hero narrative has been applied to understand how Zweig constructs his historical biographies, drawing on both his understanding of history and his convictions about the moral responsibilities of the writer. It has also been used to demonstrate how Zweig values defeat as a means for moral development in his novellas and dramas. This essay argues that Zweig’s poetics of defeat can be equally applied to his autobiography. Through their shared values of humanism, supranationalism and pacifism, the individuals remembered by Zweig form a heroic collective in their seemingly impossible fight against nationalism and fascism. The World of Yesterday thus needs to be read as a cornerstone of Zweig’s Historiography of Tomorrow, a new way of writing history, which the author proposes in the last years of his life.

Reflection of the reality of the Afghan war in the works of Bakhytbek Smagul

One of the most important events in the history of mankind was the 10-year war in Afghanistan (1979–1989). The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and conducted military operations. Conscripts from Kazakhstan to the Soviet Army also took part in these operations. In those battles, we had sons who continued the heroic traditions of our ancestors, brave commanders who found a way out of difficulties and saved many soldiers from death. One of these commanders is “Black Major” Boris Kerimbayev. In the documentary film “The King of Panshera” based on the works of the Afghan war veteran, famous writer Bakhytbek Smagul, the author tells about the exploits of the legendary Afghan war hero “Black Major” Boris Kerimbayev and his military talent.The author’s desire to turn the heroism of his comrade-in-arms, the struggle for life and death, the selfless deeds of soldiers who showed loyalty to the homeland, into a literary work, is probably associated with a passion for the art of speech in Kazakh nature. The works of art created for such a real event brought a new, fresh theme to the national literature. This is a manifestation of the continuity of literature, the continuity of traditions. The purpose of literature, born thousands of years ago and passed down from generation to generation, is to glorify heroism and courage. The literary genre is the main instrument for realizing the artist’s ideal. The author is the first to choose the genre in which to write his work. Thus, the genre fulfills the task of finding an ideological solution to the work.Contemporary military prose, including literature on the Afghan war, reflects the true face of this society. The main feature of general military literature is that it is based on the most realistic, and the second feature is that the plot is often written by Afghan war veterans and ammunition who survived this war. This difference is reflected in the choice of the genre. If one looks at the genre features of works depicting the theme of the Afghan war, one can see that it is a documentary story, essay, memoir prose, including memoirs, diaries, portraits, dedications, hymns and elegies, epitaphs. In whatever genre it is written, military literature pursues only one goal. This is the education of patriotism and courage in the younger generation.

“Always Symmetrize!: Forging Bonds in Heart of Darkness”

Abstract “Always Symmetrize!,” the title of this essay – which echoes Fredric Jameson’s better-known admonition to “always historicize” – alludes to a type of literary analysis, inspired by the Chilean psychoanalyst Ignacio Matte Blanco’s concept of “symmetric logic,” which I have been working on for several years. Briefly, it treats the makers of literary monuments as engaged – like the alchemists discussed by Mircea Eliade in The Forge and The Crucible – in the task of perfecting the work of nature, a project that they pursue under the guidance of what I call the “symmetrical imperative.” The “unsurpassable horizon” of this literary endeavor is Homer’s Iliad, whose perfectly achieved, albeit covert, bilateral symmetry (magisterially detailed by Cedric Whitman in his classic Homer and The Heroic Tradition) is made overt in the undisputed masterpiece of Greek geometrical pottery – Exekias’s amphora, “Achilles and Ajax Playing Dice,” which I discuss briefly at the outset of my essay. The greater part of this essay is devoted to an analysis of the similarly covert workings of the symmetrical imperative in Joseph Conrad’s modernist masterpiece Heart of Darkness. In the initial phases of this “alchemical process,” Conrad treats as symmetrical the two otherwise asymmetrical stages of Marlow’s journey (first to the Central Station and then to the Inner Station). In its second phase, he creates a container within which to contain this pairing of symmetrized episodes in the form of a narrative whose covert bilateral symmetry achieves, as Fernando Pessoa recommends in The Book of Disquiet, “a realization freed from the taint of reality” (30). Having completed my analysis of this twofold alchemical process in Heart of Darkness, I then devote a few concluding pages to its return in “The Secret Sharer,” a short-story which Conrad wrote several years after publishing Heart of Darkness, and in which he may well have “perfected the work of nature” even more impressively.

Paradox and Tragedy in Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island and Seneca’s Oedipus Rex: A Comparative Study

The stratagem of employing paradoxical scenario in any form of artistic expression has been a timeless creative scheme. A very famous example of paradox may be seen within Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, with the titular character’s pursuit of truth and goodwill leading to his own tragic downfall. Similarly, tragic expression has been at the centre of humans’ outlet for cathartic release. Thus, both paradox and tragedy tend to emerge in different ways in works of literature. The present study is focussed on recognizing and exploring the traces of commonalities of paradox and tragic elements between Oedipus Rex and Shutter Island(2003),by the renowned crime and mystery novelist, Dennis Lehane by considering the heroes in both narratives and the situations that their character attributes incite. The authors in both cases assign character attributes of a traditional tragic hero which constantly inform their actions, thereby creating an inevitable journey of personal downfall. The moments of anagnorisis are imbued with intense guilt and grief as both the protagonists realize that they themselves are the cause for their problems.

Artistic and Aesthetic Representation of the Mythological Image of the Water Damosel in the Bashkir Folk Epic (on the Material of the Epics “Akbuzatˮ and “Zayatulyak and Khyuhyluˮ)

Using the Bashkir epics “Akbuzatˮ and “Zayatulyk and Khyukhyluˮ, the article examines the mythical image of the water damosel – khaukhylu, which has significant artistic and aesthetic functions. This image takes a special place in the mythology of all peoples and in ancient sacred beliefs. Due to the fact that after the adoption of Christianity / Islam among the peoples, all the once sacred, pagan deities – the keepers of rivers and lakes, mountains and natural boundaries, forests and fields, as well as the ones connected with home, were endowed with a negative characteristic and began to be represented as an evil spirit. Such a fate was waiting for, for example, the traditional hero Baba Yaga – Yashchura, raised to the rank of a positive character, deified by the canon of the ancient Slavs, she was the keeper of the clan, its traditions and customs. Accordingly, after the adoption of Christianity, Yashchura took on that negative, pernicious character known to us from Slavic folk tales and folkloric accounts. As E.V. Pomerantsev correctly states, in the artistic and aesthetic sense in mythological legends and folkloric accounts there are always similar motives of “sudden meetingˮ, “sinking into the underwater kingdomˮ, “awards of the water kingˮ, “... the marriage of a hero in the underwater kingdomˮ, etc. In the Bashkir epic monuments observed in the article, these motives are strictly traced and successfully actualized.

William Thackeray's Vanity Fair The Complete Absence of the Traditional Hero

This paper aims to study William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair by using an analytical method of the central theme of the novel, its main characters as well as some of the minor, important characters. It begins with a general introduction about the novelist and his age and literary career followed by the first section which is a brief review of the characters and events of the novel. The second section analyses the very details of the novel depending on its plot and the conversations between characters. The third section asserts the hypothesis of the study and the conclusion shows that William Thackeray had managed in achieving a narrative form, unprecedented by any of his contemporaries, in which there is no role for the traditional hero.

Tom Jones : A Subaltern Critique

Henry Feilding’s Tom Jones offers a picture of English society during the imperial times through a thought-provoking scrutiny of the marginalised voices and indirectly subverts the imperial authority of oppression. Fielding’s defining work which notably laid the foundation of the English novel has often been implored for nuances of morality and sin.
 This research paper explores the novel as a prelude to the postmodern subaltern voice against the dominion of the social and economically elite through the emancipatory empowerment of the roguish foundling hero of the picaresque tradition: Tom Jones. The paper seeks to establish the relevance of Tom Jones for the readers of the so- called Third World, as it offers a glimpse into the subaltern aspects of identity of the coloniser. In this context, this paper evaluates the narrative of Fielding’s Tom Jones with reference to two key concerns: exposition of the oppressive power structure and revelation of marginalised oppressed.