Hero

2006

Ryan, John Sprott

Editor(s): William M Clements, Thomas A Green, Roger D Abrahams, Christina Bacchilega, Gillian Bennett, Mary Ellen Brown, James R Dow, Alessandro Falassi, Barbro Klein, Peter Knecht, Natalie Kononenko, Frances M Malpezzi, Margaret Mills, M D Muthukumaraswamy, Gerald Pocius, John S Ryan

Book Chapter

en

Publication

Greenwood Press

Westport, United States of America

1

10.1336/0313328471

une:2443

Worldwide, all heroes depend on their central place in a particular culture or society and on sympathetic treatment in myth and story for their appeal in a particularized time or even long before it. Those story-generating figures that appear early in culture history are deemed to be responsible for the life designs at a society's core, while most scholars, in analyzing such figures, have seen them as meaningfully expressing those designs. This hitherto perennial concept, on traditionally involving notions leadership and praiseworthy example, has experienced a profound decline - or at least a number of significant changes - since ancient times, as it moves from cultural force to folk hero to popular idol.

link

The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore and Folklife, v.1: Topics and Themes, Africa, Australia and Oceania, p. 44-47

031332848X

0313328471

44

47