The Hero as a Literary and Social Construct

Abstract

This study proposes one possible typology of the hero based on Northrop Frye’s system of classification. The latter served the purpose of making it easier to understand the processes of fashioning the constructs — both literary and social. The paper shows that this procedure is not just about the mimetic transfer of reality into literature, but rather about a more complex artistic reflection on reality. We note that the artistic (dramatic) shaping and unmasking of the social reality make possible sophisticated transitions from one type of dramatic hero to another (or still another) within the same literary character, which is unfeasible in the social reality experienced in a binary, black and white manner.
The typology of the hero used in this paper — traditional hero, non-hero, tragic hero, anti-hero, and problematic hero — reflects and sublimates all of social, historical and political reality, but at the same time such dramatic heroes, comprised simultaneously of several different subtypes based on various ideological points of view, remain individualized literary protagonists with a complex mechanism of psychological, ethical and aesthetic perception.