Skip to main content

Introduction: Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction. Concepts and Conjunctures

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction Since 1800

Abstract

The introduction outlines reasons for the cultural relevance of hero figures. It provides a brief historical overview of the role of heroes and heroism in British fiction since the Middle Ages, exploring the relevance of genre conventions as well as cultural preoccupations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

Primary Texts

  • Dryden, J. (1808) ‘Of Heroic Plays: An Essay’ in The Works of John Dryden, vol. 4, ed. W. Scott (London: William Miller), pp. 17–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eliot, G. (1986) Middlemarch, ed. D. Carroll (Oxford: Clarendon).

    Google Scholar 

  • Female Tatler, 25–27 January 1710. Available from: ProQuest [3 November 2015].

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, R. (2003) The Seven Champions of Christendom, ed. J. Fellows (Aldershot: Ashgate).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kipling, R. (1967) A Choice of Kipling’s Verse : With an Essay on Rudyard Kipling, ed. T.S. Eliot (London: Faber and Faber).

    Google Scholar 

  • Spenser, E. (1978). The Fairie Queene, ed. Thomas P. Roche, Jr. (New Haven and London: Yale UP).

    Google Scholar 

Secondary Sources

  • Allison, S.T. and G.R. Goethals (2011) Heroes: What They Do & Why We Need Them (Oxford: Oxford UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, H. (1982) ‘Gothic Heroes.’ In R. Folkenflik (ed.) The English Hero, 1660–1800 (New York: U of Delaware P), pp. 205–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bergonzi, B. (1965) Hero’s Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War (London: Constable).

    Google Scholar 

  • Berndt, K. and L. Steveker (eds.) (2011) Heroism in the Harry Potter Series (Farnham: Ashgate).

    Google Scholar 

  • Berns, U. (2013) ‘Shakespeares heldische Lukretia: Genre, Gender und Ekphrasis.’ In A. Aurnhammer and M. Pfister (eds.) Heroen und Heroisierungen in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz), pp. 219–33.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blanchard, R. (1977) ‘Introduction’ to The Christian Hero by Richard Steele (New York: Octagon Books), pp. ix–xxix.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bohrer, K.H. (2009) ‘Ritus und Geste: Die Begründung des Heldischen im Western’, Merkur. Sonderheft Heldengedenken: Über das heroische Phantasma, 63(3), pp. 942–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bolgar, R.R. (1975) ‘Hero or Anti-Hero? The Genesis and Development of the Miles Christianus.’ In N.T. Burns and C.J. Reagan (eds.) Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Albany, NY: State U of New York P), pp. 120–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bolz, N. (2009) ‘Der antiheroische Affekt’, Merkur. Sonderheft Heldengedenken: Über das heroische Phantasma, 63(3), pp. 762–71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borris, K. (2000) Allegory and Epic in English Renaissance Literature: Heroic Form in Sidney, Spenser, and Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bratton, J. S. (1991) ‘British Heroism and the Structure of Melodrama.’ In J.S. Bratton et al. (eds.) Acts of Supremacy: The British Empire and the Stage 1790–1930 (Manchester: Manchester UP), pp. 18–61.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braudel, F. (1982) The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. II, 4th impr. (Fontana: London).

    Google Scholar 

  • Brombert, V. (1999) In Praise of Antiheroes: Figures and Themes in Modern European Literature 1830–1980 (Chicago: U of Chicago P).

    Google Scholar 

  • Brombert, V. (ed.) (1969) The Hero in Literature (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett).

    Google Scholar 

  • Brower, R.A. (1971) Hero and Saint: Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Calder, J. (1977) Heroes: From Byron to Guevara (London: Hamish Hamilton).

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, J. (2008) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd rev. ed. (Novato: New World).

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlyle, T. (1993) On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, eds. M.K. Goldberg, J.J. Brattin and M. Engel (Berkeley: U of California P).

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, B. (ed.) (1995) The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey (New York: Oxford UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Cubitt, G. (2000) ‘Introduction: Heroic Reputations and Exemplary Lives.’ In G. Cubitt and A. Warren (eds.) Heroic Reputations and Exemplary Lives (Manchester: Manchester UP), pp. 1–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dallas, E.S. (1866) The Gay Science. 2 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall).

    Google Scholar 

  • Deters, A. (2013) ‘“Glorious Perverseness”: Stoic Pride and Domestic Heroism in Richardson’s Novels’, Eighteenth Century Fiction, 26(1), pp. 67–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Di Cesare, M.A. (1982) ‘“Not Less but More Heroic”: The Epic Task and the Renaissance Hero’, Yearbook of English Studies, 12, pp. 58–71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dillingham, W.B. (2005) Rudyard Kipling: Hell and Heroism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans, M. (1970) Spenser’s Anatomy of Heroism: A Commentary on the Faerie Queene (Cambridge: Cambridge UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Fellows, J. (2003) ‘Introduction’ to The Seven Champions of Christendom by Richard Johnson (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. xii–xxxi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Folkenflik, R. (ed.) (1982) The English Hero, 1660–1800 (Newark: U of Delaware P).

    Google Scholar 

  • Giesen, B. (2004) Triumph and Trauma (Boulder: Paradigm).

    Google Scholar 

  • Glancy, J. ‘Bernard Cornwell: At ease, Sharpe. The history king has the Bard in sight’ Sunday Times, 11 October 2015. Available from: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk [4 November 2015].

    Google Scholar 

  • Hassan, I. (1995) ‘The Antihero in Modern British and American Fiction’ in Rumors of Change: Essays of Five Decades (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P), pp. 55–67.

    Google Scholar 

  • Head, D. (2007) Ian McEwan (Manchester: Manchester UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hegel, G.W.F. (1975) Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hempfer, K.W. (2009) ‘Ariosts Orlando Furioso: Die (De)Konstruktion von Helden im generisch pluralen Diskurs.’ In A. Aurnhammer and M. Pfister (eds.) Heroen und Heroisierungen in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz), pp. 45–69.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hill, L.S. (1997) Heroes, Heroines and Villains in English and American Melodrama, 1850–1990 (Ann Arbor: UMI).

    Google Scholar 

  • Houghton, W.E. (1957) The Victorian Frame of Mind 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hughes, D. (1981) Dryden’s Heroic Plays (London: Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hunter, J.P. (1982) ‘Fielding and the Disappearance of Heroes.’ In R. Folkenflik (ed.) The English Hero, 1660–1800 (Newark: U of Delaware P), pp. 116–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huppé, B.F. (1975) ‘The Concept of the Hero in the Early Middle Ages.’ In N.T. Burns and C.J. Reagan (eds.) Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Albany: State U of NY P), pp. 1–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, J.W. (1982) ‘England 1660–1800: An Age without a Hero?’ In R. Folkenflik (ed.) The English Hero, 1660–1800 (Newark: U of Delaware P), pp. 25–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lennartz, N. (2007) ‘“I want a hero …”: Deconstructions of the Hero in Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century British and Irish Ficton’. Anglia 125(2), pp. 288–303.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levine, G.L. (1982) ‘“Not Like My Lancelot”: The Disappearing Victorian Hero.’ In S.M. Putzell and D.C. Leonard (eds.) Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Heroism: Essays from the 1981 Conference of the Southeastern Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (Madrid: José Porrúa Turanzas), pp. 47–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Makolkin, A. (2000) Anatomy of Heroism (New York: LEGAS).

    Google Scholar 

  • Neimneh, S. (2013) ‘The Anti-Hero in Modernist Fiction: From Irony to Cultural Renewal’, Mosaic: A Journal for Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, 46(6), pp. 75–90.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Faolain, S. (1971) The Vanishing Hero: Studies in Novelists of the Twenties (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries P).

    Google Scholar 

  • Ousby, I. (1982) ‘Carlyle, Thackeray, and Victorian Heroism’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 12, pp. 152–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peckham, M. (1982) ‘The Romantic Hero.’ In S. M. Putzell and D. C. Leonard (eds.) Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Heroism: Essays from the 1981 Conference of the Southeastern Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (Potomac, MD: Studio Humanitatis), pp. 3–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, M. (2013) ‘Zur Einführung: Helden-Figurationen der Renaissance.’ In A. Aurnhammer and M. Pfister (eds.) Heroen und Heroisierungen in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz), pp. 13–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Price, J. (2014) Everyday Heroism: Victorian Constructions of the Heroic Civilian (London: Bloomsbury).

    Google Scholar 

  • Putzell, S.M. and D.C. Leonard (1982) ‘Preface’ to S.M. Putzell and D.C. Leonard (eds.) Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Heroism: Essays from the 1981 Conference of the Southeastern Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (Potomac, MD: Studio Humanitatis), pp. xi–xvi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawson, C. (2013) ‘War and the Epic Mania in England and France: Milton, Boileau, Prior and English Mock-Heroic’, Review of English Studies, 64(265), pp. 433–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reichholf, J.H. (2009) ‘Zur Soziobiologie des Heroischen’ Merkur: Sonderheft Heldengedenken: Über das heroische Phantasma, 63(3), pp. 835–842.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richards, J. (1992) ‘Popular Imperialism and the Image of the Army in Juvenile Literature.’ In J.M. MacKenzie (ed.) Popular Imperialism and the Military 1850–1950 (Manchester: Manchester UP), pp. 80–108.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, R. (2009) Mock-Epic Poetry from Pope to Heine (Oxford: Oxford UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, M.B. (2002) Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature (Chicago: U of Chicago P).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sale, R. (1973) Modern Heroism: Essays on D.H. Lawrence, William Empson, and J.R.R. Tolkien (Berkeley: U of California P).

    Google Scholar 

  • Schabert, I. (2013) ‘Weiblicher Held oder Heldin? Die heroische Frau in der Imagination der Shakespeare-Zeit.’ In A. Aurnhammer and M. Pfister (eds.) Heroen und Heroisierungen in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz), pp. 27–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schellenberg, B.A. (1991) ‘Sociability and the Sequel: Rewriting Hero and Journey in The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part II’, Studies in the Novel, 23(3), pp. 312–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sidney, P. (1923) The Defence of Poesie: Political Discourses. Correspondence. Translations, ed. A. Feuillerat (Cambridge: Cambridge UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Smiles, S. (2002) Self-Help, with Illustrations of Character and Conduct, ed. P.W. Sinnema (Oxford: Oxford UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Swaim, K.M. (1990) ‘Mercy and the Feminine Heroic in the Second Part of Pilgrim’s Progess’, Studies in English Literature, 30(3), pp. 387–409.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taha, I. (2002) ‘Heroism in Literature: A Semiotic Model’, American Journal of Semiotics, 18(1–4), pp. 107–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Terry, R. (2005) Mock-heroic from Butler to Cowper (Burlington: Ashgate).

    Google Scholar 

  • Vallely, M. (2003) The Great Man: A Study of Heroism in the Work of Joseph Conrad (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: U of Newcastle-upon-Tyne P).

    Google Scholar 

  • Vance, N. (2010) The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge UP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Waith, E.M. (1962) The Herculean Hero in Marlowe, Chapman, Shakespeare and Dryden (London: Chatto and Windus).

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, M. (2004) The Vocation Lectures, eds. D. Owen and T. Shrey, trans. R. Livingstone (Indianapolis: Hackett).

    Google Scholar 

  • Wein, T. (2002) British Identities, Heroic Nationalisms and the Gothic Novel, 1764–1824 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilt, J. (2014) Women Writers and the Hero of Romance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Barbara Korte .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Korte, B., Lethbridge, S. (2017). Introduction: Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction. Concepts and Conjunctures. In: Korte, B., Lethbridge, S. (eds) Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction Since 1800. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33557-5_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics