The Medieval Hero

Many people hear the word medieval and think of the middle ages within England, however what many fail to neglect is that the medieval era encompasses almost 1000 years of literature over vast geographical differences. Due to the lack of documentation back then and the fact that many of their stories were handed down orally, and thus altered and embellished, many of the authors are anonymous. Due to the fact that the authors are unknown, we can only make intelligent speculations about when and where some of them originated from. We lose a piece of the cold hard history about the text because of this. Regardless of the fact that these pieces may be unknown we can still determine these historical cultures and societies mentality and deduce how they operated. I propose that we can do this by analyzing the literary hero that is presented in each of the texts.

 

A hero is someone who represents the perfect human figure and thus someone that should be idealized. Therefore the characteristics that they possess are ones that the society would value and want to have mimicked within their society. By analyzing the traits that each literary hero of the texts possesses, we can determine both the traits that a particular culture valued but also why they would have valued those traits. Therefore the literary hero gives us insight into a particular society.

 

 

I would suggest that you start at the Books page, which will give you the historical context of each text. Then I would move into each book by clicking their title. Each book has its own page in which I analyze the characteristics that each hero possess, how it reflects cultural values and why that characteristic would be valued in the historical society. After reading these I would move onto the Conclusion, where I bring it all together and discuss how the course helped me piece this together. Finally look at the Dedication page, where you will find a heartfelt thanks. Just a friendly note everything I write about (minus the historical blurbs) are my own informed opinions/speculations/thoughts that I have gathered from the discussion in class.