Mike Glyer’s File 770 SFF Fanzine posted my new piece on Byronic Heroes in SFF. Give it a read!
Batman. Severus Snape. Han Solo. Aragorn. Jaime Lannister. Roland in Stephen King’s Dark Tower. Sherlock Holmes (in his many guises). What have they got in common with Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte’s Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, and Notre Dame’s Hunchback in Hugo’s novel? Besides all being fictional male characters?
Each of these modern heroes (or anti-heroes) are, like their Victorian counterparts, descendants of a whole literature of nineteenth century literary heroes—melancholy, romantic anti-heroes who find roots in Lord Byron’s 1812 narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage—they are Byronic heroes. So how’s a Byronic hero different than a hero-hero, you ask. Thanks for playing! (Read more)
