In Praise of Antiheroes: Figures and Themes in Modern European Literature, 1830-1980University of Chicago Press, 1999 M04 15 - 168 pages In an age of upheaval and challenged faith, traditional heroes are hard to come by, and harder still to love, with their bloodstained hands and backs unbowed by the consequences of their actions. Through penetrating readings of key works of modern European literature, Victor Brombert shows how a new kind of hero—the antihero—has arisen to replace the toppled heroic model. Though they fail, by design, to live up to conventional expectations of mythic heroes, antiheroes are not necessarily "failures." They display different kinds of courage more in tune with our time and our needs: deficiency translated into strength, failure experienced as honesty, dignity achieved through humiliation. Brombert explores these paradoxes in the works of Büchner, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Svevo, Hašek, Frisch, Camus, and Levi. Coming from diverse cultural and linguistic traditions, these writers all use the figure of the antihero to question handed-down assumptions, to reexamine moral categories, and to raise issues of survival and renewal embodying the spirit of an uneasy age. |
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In Praise of Antiheroes: Figures and Themes in Modern European Literature ... Victor Brombert No preview available - 2001 |
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Akaky Akaky's Albert Camus ambivalent antihero artistic awareness becomes camp Camus Camus's Carnets chapter character consciousness context courage Danton death diary Dostoevsky's dreams Elio Elio's epic Erinyes Ettore Faber fear Félicité fictional figure Flaubert Frisch Gantenbein Georg Büchner George Sand Gogol Hašek hero heroic heroism homo Homo faber horror human intellectual ironic irony Italian Italo Svevo Jewish Jewish partisans language Levi Levi's literary Max Frisch meaning memory metaphor metonymy modern moral motif myth narrative narrator nature Noces Notes from Underground notion novel obsession Odysseus Overcoat paradox paradoxalist Plague play political Pont-l'Evêque portrait Primo Levi prison protagonist reader reality refers religious rhetoric Rieux Schweik seems Senilità sense Simple Heart spiritual Stiller story stresses struggle Survival in Auschwitz Svevo symbolic Tarrou theme tion tragic Trieste truth Ulysses underground unheroic values victory voice witness word Woyzeck writing yearning Zeno Zeno's