Analyse why the byronic hero trope continues to be popular and "sexy" male characters are still often depicted as arrogant, proud, brooding, unemotional on the surface and somewhat antagonistic to the female protagonist in the beginning to create sexual chemistry. Why haven't we moved past the Mr.Darcy fantasy- now the Mr.Grey/Edward Cullen fantasy? Why do male characters, especially those in YA such as Jace Herondale in the City of Bones series for example, continue to be by far one dimensional leather-jacket-wearing, smouldering "bad boys". There are SO MANY examples that could be discussed and explored here!!
I think that, largely, it has to do with toxic masculinity. We’ve been programmed to view men who don’t express outward emotion (except in very intimate settings) as “strong”, when in reality that isn’t the case at all. In the case of Edward Cullen/Christian Grey specifically, I think these characters romanticize relationships where there is an unhealthy balance of power. In any other context but a book, controlling who you see or don’t see would be considered abusive. Twilight and 50 Shades, however, paint these behaviors as “he just cares about you”. It also really doesn’t help that Bella Swan and Anastasia Steele seem completely oblivious to how problematic these behaviors are. – RebaZatz7 years ago
Nice topic. Don't forget Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester. Other examples might include the Phantom from Phantom of the Opera, or even Beast from Beauty and the Beast. Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter series is said to qualify too, although he's not considered completely Byronic. – Stephanie M.7 years ago
And don't forget Deadpool! Also worth considering is Dallas from "The Outsiders." Dally was the ultimate byronic hero. Throughout the novel, Dally is represented as the uncaring bad boy, but at the end it is revealed that he was the character that truly cared the most. – EmskitheNerd7 years ago
They appear in shapes, sizes, colors, and flavors. See the link: https://the-artifice.com/byronic-hero – L:Freire6 years ago
i feel like men are shamed for being vulnerable by showing compassion etc. – Glimmerkill6 years ago
Feminism created an entire genre called YA for young adult women to enjoy the strength, independence and power we aren't given in a patriarchal society. In these novels, young women are constantly undermining structures of power and are given a wide range of character types and depths. And yet YA has failed in many ways to provide the same feminist message to men by giving them characters who are emotionally vulnerable and sensitive. – sonyaya6 years ago
My understanding was that a big motive for writing original "Byronic heroes" was so that female authors could have male characters who were a little more like themselves--privileged by being male but still "lesser" in some way (for instance, Mr. Rochester is a younger son and so not first in line to inherit an estate). Probably the closest thing to this I've seen in a modern work is, interestingly enough, the male lead in Me Before You--a rich and powerful man who's held back by having a profound disability (or so he thinks). So, in a strange way, I think they are more "relatable" to the female audience than a lot of male characters who are targeted toward men, even if they treat women badly in general. – Debs5 years ago
So the other day, I'm surfing the Internet looking at Harry Potter writings (I'm a recent Potterhead and enjoying the addiction). I came across someone complaining about The Cursed Child and the Deathly Hallows epilogue, saying that they were too "heteronormative." In other words, this person wanted to know why it was always necessary for our favorite characters to get married (to a heterosexual, but I guess really to a person of any gender) and have kids to be happy.
Now, I'm a sucker for what TV Tropes calls Babies Ever After, but that post made me wonder. Why is marriage/babies held up as the ultimate happy ending? Is it the only one? What works can you name where this didn't happen, but the characters were still happy and fulfilled? How has the concept of "happily ever after" evolved? Discuss.
I would say read Madame Bovary as it works as an antithesis to the traditional happily ever after. The character of Emma Bovary originally wanted nothing more than to get married, but soon starts desiring other things in life and becomes frustrated with the mundanity of married life. I don't want to give away too much here as it may spoil the story, but the idea of marriage and being a parent as the ultimate form of happiness is challenged in that story. You may also consider different gender perspectives in the happily ever after or "Babie ever after" trope as a lot of feminist literature likes to point out how what makes a female happy in marriage may vary for males. And for the LGBTQ community, it may because marriage and adoption is something that is legally denied to them in many countries. This theory has a lot of layers to it that need qualifications. I personally like stories that end with this trope as well, but I'm also aware of how it was used to keep females in a secondary position and treated them as a prize to be won. Though it is not to say that males did not desire as well. A good example of a male protagonist that wants desires this trope is Sanosuke Harada from the Hakuori Shinsengumi visual novels. – Blackcat1307 years ago
A couple of things to consider: The happy ever after (babies ever after) is a pacifier that stems from an industry pushing an 'aspirational' social value. Keep the status quo rolling along by showing us what we should want. Secondly, the romance novel industry dictates a happy ever after ending as it is expected. Queer romance sells best when it is HEA, but there is also a place for happy for now. – sheena7 years ago
I definitely don't think marriage/babies is the only type of happy ending. I love movies like Waitress, where the protagonist is able to get out of the abuse she may be in and leave any other baggage in order to do something for herself or coming of age movies where you see the protagonist really become an adult in a positive way. I hope that makes sense! – CatBeeny6 years ago
Biologically speaking, the goal of an organism is to pass its genes on to another generation. That said, I think humans are intelligent enough to make their lives meaningful in other ways. One of Eriksen's stages of development is "generatively vs stagnation". I look at it as one of the things people need for a fulfilling life is to contribute to the next generation, but that doesn't mean everyone needs to have children. You can contribute by being a good aunt or uncle, a writer, or through other careers. Society and the media bombards us with the idea that a happy life entails marriage and children even though that isn't a happy life for everybody. One reason I think marriage is sought after is people see the majority doing it and fear loneliness if they do not do the same. I think the media needs to start pushing more of a narrative that happiness is in self-fulfilment, achieving career and personal goals, being healthy, being independent, and other components to a happy ending besides romance and children. – Dawe6 years ago
I believe 'happily ever after' could be open to interpretation where the characters in a story are content at the end. It could mean them achieving what they aspired to at the beginning or something else they least expected but will have come to terms with said achievement.
Society has long created the norm that only romantic love equates to 'happily ever after.' While it is true in some occasions, it is not necessarily the only cause for a happy ending. Achieving one's heart's desire can truly bring happiness to the soul. Unfortunately, popular culture doesn't emphasize this enough. An example is how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes. His happily ever after was fulfilling his mission in life by being the best sleuth he could be, thereby gratifying is soul. Doyle did create a happily ever after for Holmes's sidekick Dr. Watson in the form of romance (however short-lived). Either way both characters were content with where their lives were by the last book Doyle wrote. – mfernando6 years ago
There seems to be a lack of critical analysis with regards to the Maze Runner theories, especially with regards to the religious, sociological and political perspectives.
This seems too short. It needs to be expanded regarding what theories and what would be addressed. – Joseph Cernik6 years ago
This will include an analysis of the Biblical references present in the Maze Runner as well as forming a theory of the YA Cycle
– RedFlame20006 years ago
Fan fiction has a rather negative image within the literary genres. Works such as Fifty Shades of Grey do not not necessarily help the genre to renegotiate its stand in the literary world. Why is it that fan fiction is oftentimes seen as problematic? What are some positive examples? What might be the future of fan fiction?
For a shining example of the heights that fan fiction can achieve, I would suggest looking into Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It takes the source material and elevates it into something brilliant, profound and even life-altering. – Lokesh Krishna8 years ago
This is going to be a long comment but first, I really do think this question is relevant so good job. I just want to add a few things (mainly for the future writer): I gather that by fanfiction you mean those posted online for nonprofit purposes. It would be interesting to compare the impression people have of those works in comparison to "Wicked", modern Dracula/Frankenstein/etc. rewrites, those based on an existing work (ex. "Dorothy must Die" by Danielle Paige), etc. The distinction between professionally written "fanwork" and others might influence what you consider examples of fanfiction in your second question. For the first question, is there a conclusion to be drawn from people's impression of works when produced professionally? Do people assume that had a work been good it would have been published, and so works online are thus of lesser quality? Or is online fanfiction mocked because of the idea that the internet is a young person's playground, and thus online writers must be younger/less experienced? There is also the notion that fanwork is necessarily erotica which might make it seem cheaper to some. [Note: While it is also possible to discuss the pros/cons of fanworks in terms of queer representation/copyright/etc. the best thing about your question is that it's focused on people's perception of fanwork, so I wouldn't broaden the topic to include its actual workings]. For the third, one can look at the influence fans have on writers: it would be easier to see said influence on shows, but it would be interesting to see if book authors are influenced similarly. I guess my only issue then is that your topic is still very broad, and all three of your questions could make separate articles. I'm not sure I would ask you to focus on one question yet, but it would definitely be to your advantage. Still, an interesting topic. – Rina Arsen8 years ago
As a personal opinion (haven't read but watched one movie and have heard a lot of talk about it's origins), and one the future writer might use, I see it as completely irrelevant that it started out as a fan fiction because the end product doesn't rely on the source of inspiration. It's just a big messed up relationship. The fact that we constantly tie it back to it's fanfiction origins is proof that fanfic has a bad connotation, one that we should address and assess. If it doesn't affect the content, why are we still bringing it up? Why is it such a big deal? Readers of this article should ask themselves those questions. – Slaidey8 years ago
While the Artifice has received quite a few articles on this topic which are still in the publishing queue(I myself edited one today), one important derivative aspect which could be looked into is the availability of online portals for people to write out their fantasies for others to read and how this has radically altered the way people view these writings, what with everyone considering themselves a great writer.(No offense intended) – Vishnu Unnithan7 years ago
I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about the dissolution of the physical descriptions of characters in books if the narrative does not periodically draw attention to their descriptions, and particularly if the character's physical description is not a crucial part to the story (e.g. Harry Potter's tousled hair, scar, and "eyes like his mother's," etc.). Instead, we posited, readers start to develop their own visions of the characters in their mind based on the people in their life with similar personalities. What are the psychological factors at play here and what are the ramifications of this? Is this valid?
Alternatively, how critical are physical descriptions in casting adaptations of novels? Are they more or less critical than establishing the same personalities/motivations of the character in the novel? Why?
This is super relevant topic especially considering race, a common statement made today when a PoC is casted in a book adaptation, for example "The Darkest Minds" people say that the main characters race was never specified so people could interpret her in anyway they like. Seeing how physical descriptions affects a readers perception on a characters would be a fascinating topic – tmtonji6 years ago
These are two interesting topics that may serve better as a two-part series than one combined piece, unless you could have one naturally flow into the other. That being said, the first component here is relevant to aspiring writers and those who want to consume writing content in a more informed way. I for one would love to read that piece and learn more about how we construct fictional worlds (characters, but this could also extend to things like objects, sensory experiences, and settings) from our own collections of experiences, and how writers best help us recall those experiences in their own work. The second component, as tmtonji discussed earlier, is very relevant politically. To reference your example of Harry Potter, the casting of Noma Dumezweni as Hermione in the London performance of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" made headlines and (I would posit) introduced the public to changing the way we imagine characters or link their identities to race. Another example is the Marvel company's changing of race and gender of some of their classic characters (perhaps, more accurately a transfer of a character's title to a different canonical character, but still) and how different audiences have reacted. It's definitely something you could delve deeply into. – Shaboostein6 years ago
I am highly interested in this topic and how readers (psychologically) make their characters look like in their minds. For instance, Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series was never described in terms of skin color, and this goes for many other characters in other books as well. An important note to make when writing this article is how many book adaptations to film tend to have light-skinned actors/actresses, and figure out whether it is intentional or not, and WHY this occurs so often. – Yvonne T.6 years ago
This is a great topic. Personally, when Im reading I prefer character descriptions to be vivid and frequent. I can't pot a random face to a character when I read. I don't know if this is due to my own inability of imagination or what. But I also feel that since reading is a form of escapism for a lot of people, making a characters face in the image of someone they know might be counter intuitive. – vmainella6 years ago
The choice of a name is quite powerful in literature, and in most popular-culture texts, as it can set particular expectations, symbolise aspects of the character, identify even the unique context of the narrative. Children's literature in particular has used this to good effect with the choice of names that capture the popularity and every-man position of the particular period in which it was produced. For instance Mary of 'The Secret Garden' is an ideal choice for the period in which the book was set, as it was an iconic English name. An example of a symbolic name is Bella Swan from 'Twilight' that means beautiful swan, which sets against the symbolic fact Bella perceives herself as an "ugly duckling" that blooms within the love story. There are many such examples of both selecting names of the time and names with symbolic value. What other examples can you identify?
What you're describing is actually its own well-established sub-discipline of literary studies, called "literary onomastics." If you'd like to read up more about it, I'd recommend perusing the decades worth of essays that have been published in Literary Onomatics Studies (https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/los/) and its successor, The Journal of Literary Onomatics (https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/jlo/). There's also the Names: A Journal of Onomastics (https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ynam20; I believe you'll need a university library login to access this one) for a less specialized view of names and naming, not exclusive to its function in literature. Some authors I'd recommend are Leonard Ashley, W. F. H. Nicholaisen, and Grace Alvarez-Altman; you also might want to check out the Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming (ed. Carole Hough, 2016), which is a pretty comprehensive primer on the subject. With regards to the article that you're proposing, I'm not too sure if "What other examples can you identify?" is necessarily the best springboard for a discussion, as it may reduce this broad field of study to a handful of stray observations. (Most of the early LOS articles were limited to how names are used by a specific author or text, so as to keep the discussion directed on a central argument.) The article may be designed as a cursory intro to literary onomatics for beginners, which would work best if it delved into some introductory theory, rather than being limited only to case studies. Or, since you seem to be interested specifically in naming in children's/YA fiction, that could be tighter focus for the article. That way the selection of case studies would be more directly relevant to matters genre and reader demography, as opposed to trying to be representative of the full extent of naming's power. Just my two cents. – ProtoCanon6 years ago
Literature is a field of study. It is categorisation of all written (and some multimedia) texts that engage to some extent in narrative storytelling. It covers early Greek theatre, ancient mythologies, classical romance and gothic, horror verses weird, modern, post-modern, paranormal romance and so much more. It is a vast and unwieldy monster of source material.
As such, to make sense of it literary critics engage most often with literary theory – lenses and concepts that can be applied to categories of works. These range again widely: genre, feminist, post-colonial, structural, mimetic, queer – theories, etc. The use of these different lenses is important as it helps to highlight the various hidden, intended or contested views within different literature. It also helps make sense of the context in which a text is produced, and reflected on through the context in which it is being examined.
However, for many the plethora of literary theory is a terribly daunting and overwhelming spectrum. I would propose a great article that would help many would be to take a single text, one not too complex or long, and apply the different lenses to show how they work. Actually what would be excellent would be if a few people took on this topic with different texts (some old, some new) to help show the diversity of theory.
Excellent idea. This is definitely a topic worthy of approval and important. Literary theory is messy with its multiple categories and subcategories. I would suggest that anyone who takes upon this task takes a "Intro to Lit Theory" approach and perhaps chooses (for instance) 5 main theories for analysis. Sub genres could be listed later without going into detail. For example, within romantic literature gothic as a horror genre come forth. But gothic in itself has already split into post colonial gothic. Therefore, Romantic would be your main point off analysis, but later a small paragraph on its fruits of gothic could be 'listed' to help simply this heavy topic. – Pamela Maria6 years ago
@Joseph. Part of what I'm trying to highlight is what Pamela has identified above, which is this is such a messy category that it cannot be narrowed easily down. I could just put forward a topic such as Feminism Readings, but even that has so much contextual weight in literary theory to be enormous. Instead what I want people to consider with this topic is that these are simply categories designed to help a theorist expand on the knowledge already present within either the text or the society in which the reader exists. I don't necessarily see an issue in having multiple people take on this topic, and it something that could work quite well on this site with so many disparate viewpoints. – SaraiMW6 years ago
I also agree that this is a great topic, but could turn into a daunting article. Perhaps this could be a series set for decoding different fields of literature - ex. one article for post-colonial literary theory, one for queer literary theory, one for genre, - etc. Someone could tackle these one by one, or a whole host of folks address topics they feel best suited to. – LoganG6 years ago
Today's generation is exposed to varying topics, thanks to social media. Now why should books entail to be censored? Yes, there are a few outliers that push an agenda but the spotlight is not on them. I am unsure as to what books are currently banned, but i believe there should be a new wave of books introduced into schools (perhaps separate topic). Maybe the "list" of what considers a book bad or extreme should be updated.
Censorship should not be taken lightly. It endangers the basic right of freedom of expression. Labeling books as good or bad is a subjective matter. Perhaps, the members of the generation should pick their own curriculum--individually. – purplelight717 years ago
The American Library Association releases annual reports on the most frequently challenged or banned books in schools each year. In recent years, the most frequently banned books (often 5 of the top 10 titles) have dealt with LGBTQ+ topics, especially transgender. – JamesBKelley7 years ago
Perhaps the best way to promote any book is to ban it! We are always drawn to what we're told we can't have or is bad for us, even if only to satisfy our curiosity. – Amyus7 years ago
I went to a catholic french school from kindergarten to seventh grade. Everything was censored: books, movie rentals, computers, etc. We were basically in a tiny ignorant bubble full of white kids in a white neighborhood. Transitioning to a Public High School was such a big shock. We had kids from all over the city and so many things changed. All through primary there was one idea: God created everything. Then we were lead to believe that if someone was not catholic they would go to hell and we should not talk to them. I was so ignorant and going to High School and being in an environment that pushed me to think outside the box and challenge everything I had know made me into the person I am today. Plus I have learned so much from books such as To Kill a Mockingbird, 1981, Persepolis. Not so much Shakespeare, but I had a great English teacher who helped a lot. – sissid6 years ago
Relevant and timeless topic you have there. I'm the last person to push for book banning, having been a bookworm almost since the womb. My personal philosophy is that if you ban one, no book is safe. And yet, there are certain lines I won't cross in my personal reading--lines I wonder if authors and readers should be crossing. For instance, if a book is basically just pages of porn, shouldn't we say/do something about it? If a book is encouraging people to, I don't know, embrace the idea of modern day concentration camps, do we have a moral obligation to respond? It's definitely a lot to think about. – Stephanie M.6 years ago
I think this needs to are rewritten. I get the feeling there is some focus on a "new generation" of banned books as opposed to those that are perennial favorites to be banned. – Joseph Cernik6 years ago
