Antihero

This article is about the character type. For the 1999 action film, see Anti-hero (film). For the punk band, see Anti-Heros. For the Marlon Roudette song, see Anti Hero (Brave New World).

An antihero or antiheroine is a main character in a story who lacks conventional heroic qualities such as idealism, courage, and morality.[1][2][3][4][5]

History

The antihero archetype can be traced back at least as far as Homer's Thersites.[6] The concept has also been identified in classical Greek drama,[7] Roman satire, and Renaissance literature[6] such as Don Quixote[7][8] and the picaresque rogue.[9]

The term antihero was first used as early as 1714,[5] emerging in works such as Rameau's Nephew in the 18th century,[10] and is also used more broadly to cover Byronic heroes as well.[11]

Literary Romanticism in the 19th century helped popularize new forms of the antihero,[12][13] such as the Gothic double.[14] The antihero eventually became an established form of social criticism, a phenomenon often associated with the unnamed protagonist in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground.[15] The antihero emerged as a foil to the traditional hero archetype, a process that Northrop Frye called the fictional "centre of gravity."[16] This movement indicated a literary change in heroic ethos from feudal aristocrat to urban democrat, as was the shift from epic to ironic narratives.[16]

The antihero became prominent in early 20th century existentialist works such as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915),[17] Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausée (1938) (French for Nausea),[18] and Albert Camus' L'Étranger (1942) (French for The Stranger).[19] The protagonist in these works is an indecisive central character who drifts through his life and is marked by ennui, angst, and alienation.[20]

The antihero entered American literature in the 1950s and up to the mid-1960s was portrayed as an alienated figure, unable to communicate.[21] The American antihero of the 1950s and 1960s (as seen in the works of Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, et al.) was typically more proactive than his French counterpart; with characters such as Kerouac's Dean Moriarty famously taking to the road to vanquish his ennui.[22] The British version of the antihero emerged in the works of the "angry young men" of the 1950s.[7][23] The collective protests of Sixties counterculture saw the solitary antihero gradually eclipsed from fictional prominence,[24] though not without subsequent revivals in literary and cinematic form.[25]

In sports fiction, the sporting antihero, such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, is not a team player, challenges officialdom, and seeks financial gain over club loyalty, yet still acquires a large fan following by way of his/her actualization of the rebel archetype.[26][27]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "American Heritage Dictionary Entry: antihero". Ahdictionary.com. 2013-01-09. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
  2. ↑ "anti-hero - definition of anti-hero by Macmillan Dictionary". Macmillandictionary.com. Retrieved 2013-10-04.
  3. ↑ "Antiheroine - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary". Merriam-webster.com. 2012-08-31. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
  4. ↑ "anti-hero: definition of anti-hero in Oxford dictionary (British & World English)". Oxforddictionaries.com. Retrieved 2014-09-06.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Antihero - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary". Merriam-webster.com. 2012-08-31. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Steiner, George (2013). Tolstoy Or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism. New York: Open Road. pp. 197–198. ISBN 9781480411913.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "antihero (literature) - Encyclopedia Britannica". Britannica.com. 2013-02-14. Retrieved 2014-08-09.
  8. ↑ "Literary Terms and Definitions A". Web.cn.edu. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
  9. ↑ Halliwell, Martin (2007). American Culture in the 1950s (Transferred to Digital Print 2012 ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press. p. 60. ISBN 9780748618859.
  10. ↑ Steiner, George (2013). Tolstoy Or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism. New York: Open Road. pp. 199–200. ISBN 9781480411913.
  11. ↑ "Literary Terms and Definitions B". Web.cn.edu. Retrieved 2014-09-06.
  12. ↑ Alsen, Eberhard (2014). The New Romanticism: A Collection of Critical Essays. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. p. 72. ISBN 9781317776000. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  13. ↑ Simmons, David (2008). The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut (1st ed. ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 5. ISBN 9780230612525. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  14. ↑ Lutz, Deborah (2006). The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, and the Nineteenth-century Seduction Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. p. 82. ISBN 9780814210345. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  15. ↑ Steiner, George (2013). Tolstoy Or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism. New York: Open Road. pp. 201–207. ISBN 9781480411913.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Frye, Northrop (2002). Anatomy of Criticism. London: Penguin. p. 34. ISBN 9780141187099.
  17. ↑ Barnhart, Joe E. (2005). Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Talent. Lanham: University Press of America. p. 151. ISBN 9780761830979.
  18. ↑ Asong, Linus T. (2012). Psychological Constructs and the Craft of African Fiction of Yesteryears: Six Studies. Mankon: Langaa Research & Publishing CIG. p. 76. ISBN 9789956727667.
  19. ↑ Gargett, Graham (2004). Heroism and Passion in Literature: Studies in Honour of Moya Longstaffe. Amsterdam [u.a.]: Rodopi. p. 198. ISBN 9789042016927.
  20. ↑ Brereton, Geoffery (1968). A Short History of French Literature. Penguin Books. pp. 254–255.
  21. ↑ Hardt, Michael; Weeks, Kathi (2000). The Jameson Reader (Repr. ed.). Oxford, UK ; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. pp. 294–295. ISBN 9780631202707.
  22. ↑ Edelstein, Alan (1996). Everybody is Sitting on the Curb: How and why America's Heroes Disappeared. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. p. 18. ISBN 9780275953645.
  23. ↑ Ousby, Ian (1996). The Cambridge Paperback Guide to Literature in English. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 27. ISBN 9780521436274.
  24. ↑ Edelstein, Alan (1996). Everybody is Sitting on the Curb: How and why America's Heroes Disappeared. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. p. 1. ISBN 9780275953645.
  25. ↑ Hardt, Michael; Weeks, Kathi (2000). The Jameson Reader (Repr. ed.). Oxford, UK ; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. p. 295. ISBN 9780631202707.
  26. ↑ Delaney, Tim; Madigan, Tim (2009). The Sociology of Sports: An Introduction. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. pp. 72 & 284. ISBN 0786441690.
  27. ↑ Handelsman, Bud (2009). Families And How To Survive Them. London: Random House Ebooks. pp. 202–203. ISBN 1407011030.

Further reading

External links

Look up antihero in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.