The Hero and Hero-Making Across Genres

This book critically examines how a Hero is made, sustained, and even deformed, in contemporary cultures. It brings together diverse ideas from philosophy, mythology, religion, literature, cinema, and social media to explore how heroes are constructed across genres, mediums, and traditions.

The essays in this volume present fresh perspectives for readers to conceptualize the myriad possibilities the term ‘Hero’ brings with itself. They examine the making and unmaking of the heroes across literary, visual and social cultures ―in religious spaces and in classical texts; in folk tales and fairy tales; in literature, as seen in Heinrich Böll’s Und Sagte Kein Einziges Wort, Thomas Brüssig’s Heroes like Us, and in movies, like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and in the short film like Dean Potter's When Dogs Fly. The volume also features nuanced takes on intersectional feminist representations in hero movies; masculinity in sports biopics; taking everyday heroes from the real to the reel, among others key themes.

A stimulating work that explores the mechanisms that ‘manufacture’ heroes, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of English literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, film studies, media studies, literary and critical theory, arts and aesthetics, political sociology and political philosophy.

Amar Singh is Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Mahila Mahavidyalaya (MMV), Banaras Hindu University, India. He has completed his doctoral research on Hyperrealism and Christopher Nolan’s Cinematic Texts in 2016 from Banaras Hindu University. At present he is working as a post-doctoral researcher (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany. His research interest areas are English Literature, Film Studies and Popular Culture.

Shipra Tholia is Assistant Professor at the Department of German Studies, Banaras Hindu University, India. She has completed her M.Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is currently pursuing her doctoral research from Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany as a German Academic Exchange Service/ DAAD scholar. Her research interest areas are Media Studies, Narratology, German Language and Literature.

Pravin K Patel is Assistant Professor of English, Mahila Mahavidyalaya (MMV), Banaras Hindu University, India. He received his Doctorate in English from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. His areas of interest are medical humanities and English literature.