Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Romantic hero is a literary archetype referring to a character that rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has themselves at the center of their own existence. [1] The Romantic hero is often the protagonist in a literary work, and the primary focus is on the character's thoughts rather than their actions.
Romantic epic is a term used to designate works such as Morgante, Orlando Innamorato, Orlando Furioso and Gerusalemme Liberata, which freely lift characters, themes, plots and narrative devices from the world of prose chivalric romance.
Heroic romances flourished during a reawakening of medieval romantic elements and usually featured the pursuit of the valiant for impossible beauty. However, they also captured the language, feeling, and atmosphere of the age. The passion of love is dominant throughout; the object of the hero's affections is usually very beautiful and fiercely ...
The romantic form pursued the wish-fulfillment dream where the heroes and heroines were considered representations of the ideals of the age while the villains embodied the threat to their ascendancy. [5] There is also a persistent archetype, which involved a hero's quest. This quest or journey served as the structure that held the narrative ...
The word medieval also evokes distressed damsels, dragons, and other romantic tropes. [20] It developed further from the epics as time went on; in particular, "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates." [21]
The themes within an epic are reflected in the relationship between the epic hero and the epic setting. The concerns of an epic are greater than the individual hero's concerns; the grandiosity extends to the conflict, and the concern of the epic is the concern of the entire world within the narrative. [2]
Byron c. 1816, by Henry Harlow. The Byronic hero is a variant of the Romantic hero as a type of character, named after the English Romantic poet Lord Byron. [1] Historian and critic Lord Macaulay described the character as "a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection".
The Byronic hero first reached the wider public in Byron's semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818). In contrast, Lord Byron and Walter Scott achieved enormous fame and influence throughout Europe with works exploiting the violence and drama of their exotic and historical settings; [ 7 ] Goethe called ...