New Essay: New Age Hero — The Eternal Return of the Hero in Art and Literature
I have recently completed a new long-form essay, New Age Hero: The Eternal Return of the Hero in Art and Literature.
Beginning with The Epic of Gilgamesh and the heroes of Greece, the essay follows the changing image of the hero through Christianity, the Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism. It asks why the heroic figure repeatedly returns—even within cultures increasingly suspicious of greatness, mastery and the idea of the exemplary individual.
The later sections move into more speculative territory, bringing heroism into dialogue with Freud and the Oedipal Complex, the formation of self-image, masculinity, exemplary identification and virtuosity. The central suggestion is that the hero may serve as a kind of mirror: an image through which human beings imagine, test and revise possible versions of themselves.
Comments, responses and critical feedback are very welcome below. I would be particularly interested to hear from readers approaching the subject from art history, literature, psychology, philosophy or related fields.
The form of heroism changes, as our needs change. A hero represents safety- a safety that guarantees familarity, a constancy.
Without a change in how our hero’s present theirself, we ourselves are only subject to change. If we are the only things to change, then our model of a hero ceases to function as a model of our future possible self; thus there is no protection or reassurance guaranteed from these figures. They have relinquished their status as hero.
A hero must not only embody continuity, but they must embody possibility.
I’m my mothers biggest hero
Consummate essaymanship!