In Praise of Antiheroes: Figures and Themes in Modern European Literature, 1830-1980 - Brossura

Brombert, Victor

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0226075435 ISBN 13: 9780226075433

Casa editrice: University of Chicago Press, 2001

Riassunto

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.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Victor Brombert is the Henry Putnam University Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at Princeton University.

Dalla seconda/terza di copertina:

"Brombert's investigation is expert; his choice of texts canonical . . . his approach broadly humanist. An impressive and ambitious project."-Choice

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.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: University of Chicago Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0226075435
• ISBN 13: 9780226075433
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 178