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Master of Doom. The Hero in the Classical Epics, Tolkien, and Zelensky

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Heroes never die! They are kept alive through times by tales forged from the conflict of fate and character. Wherein their actions are upheld by people not due to their perfection but as examples of virtuous acts to follow and as warnings of those ill acts to avoid. It is the aim of this dissertation to look at the archetype of the hero in three different spheres: Classical Epic; John R. R. Tolkien’s fiction; and modern rhetoric, namely in Volodymyr Zelensky’s speeches on the war in Ukraine, in order to analyse the evolution of the concept of heroism and its validity within modern culture. A more focussed view will be given to the role of fate, which can fall anywhere along a spectrum between determinism and free will, in order to define if the main features of a hero – whether he is a mythological, a literary, or a political character – are identical or not. To this end, we will consider the main heroic characters of Classical Epics (Achilles, Hektor, Aeneas, and Turnus), the heroes in two books by Tolkien The Silmarillion, and The Children of Húrin), and the notion of heroism in Zelensky’s speeches on war between February and March 2022. We expect to show how some of these characters’ features constitute what we still expect of the conduct of some high standing individuals. Nevertheless, as we can see, for instance in the “Roman” Aeneas, the hero has at times moments of weakness and despair. This reminds us that the perception of heroism is more complex than it may seem and subject to cultural and moral contexts.

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Heroism Fate Classical epic heroes Tolkien’s heroes Zelensky Cultural identity Cultural Management . Faculdade de Artes e Humanidades

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CC License