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{{short description|Type of fictional character}}{{other uses}}{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2023}}File:Clint Eastwood - 1960s.JPG|thumb|right|Revisionist Western films commonly feature antiheroes as lead characters whose actions are morally ambiguous. Clint Eastwood, pictured here in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), portrayed the archetypal antihero called the "Man with No Name" in the Italian Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti WesternsSpaghetti WesternsAn antihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero)WEB, Anti-Hero,weblinkweblink dead, 6 August 2020, Lexico, Oxford University Press, 26 September 2020, or antiheroine is a main character in a narrative (in literature, film, TV, etc.) who may lack some conventional heroic qualities and attributes, such as idealism, courage, and morality. Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions that most of the audience considers morally correct, their reasons for doing so may not align with the audience's morality.BOOK, Laham, Nicholas, Currents of Comedy on the American Screen: How Film and Television Deliver Different Laughs for Changing Times, 2009, McFarland (publisher), McFarland & Co., Jefferson, North Carolina, 9780786442645, 51, Antihero is a literary term that can be understood as standing in opposition to the traditional hero, i.e., one with high social status, well liked by the general populace. Past the surface, scholars have additional requirements for the antihero. Some scholars refer to the "Racinian" antihero, who is defined by several factors. The first is that the antihero is doomed to fail before their adventure begins. The second constitutes the blame of that failure on everyone but themselves. Thirdly, they offer a critique of social morals and reality.JOURNAL, Kennedy, Theresa Varney, 2014, 'No Exit' in Racine's Phèdre: The Making of the Anti-Hero,weblink The French Review, 88, 1, 165–178, 10.1353/tfr.2014.0114, 256361158, 2329-7131, To other scholars, an antihero is inherently a hero from a specific point of view, and a villain from another.JOURNAL, Klapp, Orrin E., September 1948, The Creation of Popular Heroes,weblink American Journal of Sociology, 54, 2, 135–141, 10.1086/220292, 143440315, 0002-9602, This idea is further backed by the addition of character alignments, which are commonly displayed by role-playing games.JOURNAL, Waskul, Dennis, Lust, Matt, August 2004, Role-Playing and Playing Roles: The Person, Player, and Persona in Fantasy Role-Playing,weblink Symbolic Interaction, 27, 3, 333–356, 10.1525/si.2004.27.3.333, 0195-6086, Typically, an antihero is the focal point of conflict in a story, whether as the protagonist or as the antagonistic force.JOURNAL, Petersen, Michael Bang, An Age of Chaos?, 2019,weblink RSA Journal, 165, 3 (5579), 44–47, 26907483, 0958-0433, This is due to the antihero's engagement in the conflict, typically of their own will, rather than a specific calling to serve the greater good. As such, the antihero focuses on their personal motives first and foremost, with everything else secondary.JOURNAL, Klapp, Orrin E., 1948, The Creation of Popular Heroes,weblink American Journal of Sociology, 54, 2, 135–141, 10.1086/220292, 2771362, 143440315, 0002-9602,

History

File:Kerouac by Palumbo.jpg|thumb|right|U.S. writer Jack Kerouac and other figures of the "Beat GenerationBeat GenerationAn early antihero is Homer's Thersites.BOOK, Steiner, George, Tolstoy Or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism, 2013, Open Road, New York, 9781480411913, 197–207, The concept has also been identified in classical Greek drama,WEB,weblink antihero, Encyclopædia Britannica, 14 February 2013, 9 August 2014, Roman satire, and Renaissance literature such as Don QuixoteWEB, Wheeler, L. Lip, Literary Terms and Definitions A,weblink Dr. Wheeler's Website, Carson-Newman University, 3 October 2013, and the picaresque rogue.BOOK, Halliwell, Martin, American Culture in the 1950s,weblink limited, 2007, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 9780748618859, 60, The term antihero was first used as early as 1714,WEB,weblink Antihero, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 31 August 2012, 3 October 2013, emerging in works such as Rameau's Nephew in the 18th century, and is also used more broadly to cover Byronic heroes as well, created by the English poet Lord Byron.WEB, Wheeler, L. Lip, Literary Terms and Definitions B,weblink Dr. Wheeler's Website, Carson-Newman University, 6 September 2014, Literary Romanticism in the 19th century helped popularize new forms of the antihero,BOOK, Alsen, Eberhard, The New Romanticism: A Collection of Critical Essays, 2014, Taylor & Francis, Hoboken, 9781317776000, 72,weblink 20 April 2015, Google Books, BOOK, Simmons, David, The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut, 2008, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 9780230612525, 5, 1st,weblink 20 April 2015, Google Books, such as the Gothic double.BOOK, Lutz, Deborah, The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, and the Nineteenth-century Seduction Narrative, 2006, Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 9780814210345, 82,weblink 20 April 2015, Google Books, The antihero eventually became an established form of social criticism, a phenomenon often associated with the unnamed protagonist in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. The antihero emerged as a foil to the traditional hero archetype, a process that Northrop Frye called the fictional "center of gravity".BOOK, Frye, Northrop,weblink Anatomy of Criticism, 2002, Penguin Books, Penguin, 9780141187099, London, 34, registration, This movement indicated a literary change in heroic ethos from feudal aristocrat to urban democrat, as was the shift from epic to ironic narratives.Huckleberry Finn (1884) has been called "the first antihero in the American nursery".BOOK, Hearn, Michael Patrick, The Annotated Huckleberry Finn: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade), 2001, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 0393020398, xvci, 1st,weblink registration, Charlotte Mullen of Somerville and Ross's The Real Charlotte (1894) has been described as an antiheroine.BOOK, Ehnenn, Jill R., Women's Literary Collaboration, Queerness, and Late-Victorian Culture, 2008, Ashgate Publishing, 9780754652946, 159,weblink 7 April 2020, en, Google Books, NEWS, Cooke, Rachel, The 10 best Neglected literary classics – in pictures,weblink 7 April 2020, The Guardian, 27 February 2011, BOOK, Woodcock, George, Twentieth Century Fiction, 1 April 1983, Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 9781349170661, 628,weblink 7 April 2020, en, Google Books, The antihero became prominent in early 20th century existentialist works such as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915),BOOK, Barnhart, Joe E., Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Talent, 2005, University Press of America, Lanham, 9780761830979, 151, Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea (1938),BOOK, Asong, Linus T., Psychological Constructs and the Craft of African Fiction of Yesteryears: Six Studies, 2012, Langaa Research & Publishing CIG, Mankon, 9789956727667, 76,weblink Google Books, and Albert Camus's The Stranger (1942).BOOK, Gargett, Graham, Heroism and Passion in Literature: Studies in Honour of Moya Longstaffe, 2004, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 9789042016927, 198,weblink Google Books, The protagonist in these works is an indecisive central character who drifts through his life and is marked by boredom, angst, and alienation.BOOK, Brereton, Geoffery, A Short History of French Literature, 1968, Penguin Books, 254–255, The antihero entered American literature in the 1950s and up to the mid-1960s as an alienated figure, unable to communicate.BOOK, Hardt, Michael, Weeks, Kathi, The Jameson Reader, 2000, Wiley-Blackwell, Blackwell, Oxford, UK ; Malden, Massachusetts, 9780631202707, Reprint, 294–295, The American antihero of the 1950s and 1960s was typically more proactive than his French counterpart.BOOK, Edelstein, Alan, Everybody is Sitting on the Curb: How and why America's Heroes Disappeared, 1996, Praeger, Westport, Connecticut, 9780275953645, 1; 18, The British version of the antihero emerged in the works of the "angry young men" of the 1950s.BOOK, Ousby, Ian, The Cambridge Paperback Guide to Literature in English, 1996, Cambridge University Press, New York, 9780521436274, 27,weblink The collective protests of Sixties counterculture saw the solitary antihero gradually eclipsed from fictional prominence, though not without subsequent revivals in literary and cinematic form.During the Golden Age of Television from the 2000s and into the present time, antiheroes such as Tony Soprano, Jack Bauer, Gregory House, Walter White, Don Draper, Marty Byrde, Nucky Thompson and Jax Teller became prominent in the most popular and critically acclaimed TV shows.WEB, Reese, Hope, Why Is the Golden Age of TV So Dark?,weblink The Atlantic, 31 October 2021, en, 11 July 2013, A new book explains the link between the rise of antihero protaganists and the unprecedented abundance of great TV (and what Dick Cheney has to do with it)., Faithfull, E. (2021). How House brought the "savant anti-hero" into the mainstream and changed TV dramas. www.nine.com.au.weblink A. (n.d.). Hear us out: Gregory House was TV's last great doctor.weblink

See also

• Anti-fairy tale
• Anti-novel
• False protagonist
• List of fictional antiheroes

References

{{reflist}}

External links

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