Gods, heroes and mortal men : a study of the hero's power of action in relation to Northrop Frye's theory of modes

Abstract

This thesis seeks to explore the hero's power of action in relation to Northrop Frye's theory of modes in his Anatomy of Criticism, specifically taking for its structure his historical modes. The thesis follows Frye's five modes through a history of literature in which the hero of each mode may be perceived as moving further away from the godlike and closer to the human, giving the appearance of a loss of power as the modes progress through time The first chapter deals with the first of Frye's modes - that of myth, and seeks to establish the hero's position both in relation to the divine world, as well as to the mortal world in which he lives, with specific reference to the divine hero Hercules. This chapter also explores the notion of an 'archetypal hero' - understood by Frye to be that hero who possesses the greatest power of action, but also whose pattern appears to remain an underlying structure throughout the progress of literature. Finally, the chapter ends with a discussion of the mortal hero Achilles, in whom the tragic aspect of the hero who chooses death is explored. The Second Chapter begins with an exploration of the hero of Frye's second mode - the hero of romance, who is essentially human. The hero of this first section is Beowulf, who follows the pattern of the quest of romance, yet is given a tragic treatment is his inability to finally complete this quest. The second hero, Macbeth, belongs to the high mimetic mode and is also a tragic hero, yet while his trajectory, like Beowulf s, ends in death, his journey is a complex one which brings into focus the moral ambivalence of the heroic as it is understood in the preceding modes. The final hero of this chapter, the human protagonist Robinson Crusoe, belongs to the low mimetic. While he is understood to be much like us, in that his narrative is assumed to be realistic, his narrative nonetheless appears to reveal the pattern of the archetypal hero. The final chapter deals with Frye's final mode of irony, in which the hero has least power of action. The first section of this chapter concerns the paranoid anti-hero Oedipa Maas, whose increasing inability to make decisions in a world that seems determined to remain unintelligible leaves her entirely unable to act. Finally, this chapter will conclude with a discussion of the hero of the film trilogy The Matrix, who returns to the realm of the mythical hero, following the archetypal pattern of the heroic, yet does so within a postmodern universe, thus suggesting novel developments in the heroic figure. This thesis will conclude with some closing remarks with reference to Frye's structure of modes, relating this to Kathy Acker's punk novel Empire of the Senseless, which suggests a world in which the hero may be eternally absent.