This study performed a mythic analysis on three films with child heroes including E.T.—the Extra-Terrestrial, Stand by Me, and The Goonies. Several unifying themes were extracted and then compared with the dominant values of Reagan America to determine if these films provided a unique cultural outlook. While most of the uncovered themes have been recognized in other films of the era, the theme of childhood as a community in peril is unique. It is purported these films pass judgment on Reagan as a dubious national patriarch, and that it is possible that this is a function that many myths with child heroes fulfill. / Master of Arts

This thesis is significant for the knowledge it offers concerning the influence of Napoleon Bonaparte's personality and career upon the character and the work of Lord Byron. It is significant because of the light it throws on both Napoleon and the culture of Europe during his era. This study is significant in the insight it indirectly gives into the psychological phenomenon of hero-worship, to which it gives a more universal application through the medium of Byron's attitude toward Napoleon.

The Magus, by John Fowles, can be read as a modern re-telling of the traditional hero quest. The thesis attempts to explore all of the ways the novel compares to hero myths.

This study of the elements of the Byronic hero in Herman Melville's Captain Ahab includes a look at the Byronic hero and Byron himself, the Byronic hero and the Gothic tradition, the Byronic hero and his "humanities," and the Byronic hero and Prometheus-Lucifer.

Dassoucy a fait de ses Aventures burlesques un plaidoyer « historique ». Il se présente comme un personnage en quête de son existence, d'une cohérence de valeurs et de sentiments ; cette quête se définit comme une bataille contre les contraintes sociales,juridiques et religieuses, et génère une conception de la vie comme espace de liberté et d'aspiration à l'authenticité.Mon objectif était de rappeler les origines du genre pour mettre en évidence la spécificité du héros picaresque chez Dassoucy, tout à fait différente du picaresque traditionnel. Comme de nombreux écrivains de son époque, Théophile de Viau, Cyrano et Chapelle,Dassoucy nous montre l'envers du Grand~siècle. La pensée libertine n'est pas l'apanage de Dassoucy mais elle est beaucoup plus claire chez lui. Il s1agit de libertinage des moeurs, dont les traits apparaissent dans l'obscénité diogénique de l'auteur, dans ses impostures et surtout dans son discours libertin chargé de propos audacieux - obscènes ou blasphématoires. Toutes les contraintes sont rejetées, toutes les limites sont dépassées. La complexité de la réception du texte dassoucien dont la saisie échappe au commun des lecteurs, surtout celui habitué à la continuité et à la linéarité des textes classiques, fait la modernité de son libertinage. Le lecteur est dans ! 'obligation de s'adapter à cette nouvelle forme d'écriture en rompant avec ses habitudes et en déchiffrant l'écriture burlesque de Dassoucy. / Dassoucy turned his Burlesque adventures into a "historical" plea. The main character is in search of the meaning of his own life, a coherence of values and feelings; this quest is defined as a battle against social, legal and religious constraints,and generates a conception of life as an area of freedom and aspiration to authenticity. My objective was to point out the origins of the genre in order to highlight the specificity of the picaresque hero in Dassoucy's works, quite different from traditional picaresque. Like many writers of his time, Theophile de Viau, Cyrano and Chapelle, Dassoucy shows us the dark side of the Great Century. Libertine thought is not the prerogative of Dassoucy, but it is much clearer in his work. It is the libertinism of a way of life, whose features appear in the Diogenic obscenity of the author, in his impostures, and especially in his libertine discourse, loaded wîth audacious, obscene and blasphemous rernarks. Ali constraints are rejected. The complexity of the text constitutes the modernity of such a libertinism. The reader is obliged to break with his Iiterary conventions and habits in order to decipher the burlesque writing of Dassoucy.

The novella, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts was published in 1826 by Joseph von Eichendorff and was heralded at that time and for many years thereafter by critics as the epitome of the German romantic novel, and the hero, the Taugenichts himself, was the ultimate German romantic hero as well. In the recent past critics have questioned this orientation and research has been initiated that contradicts the assertion that Eichendorff crafted the ideal romantic novella and hero. This Thesis will examine the validity of this claim.

This is a multidisciplinary and comparative study of the recurrent representations of bandits in Latin American literature from the second half of the 19th Century to the early 20th Century. After the wars of independence in the Americas, the founding of postcolonial nation-states or Creole Republics (Repúblicas Criollas) marginalized entire rural populations, composed of indigenous people but also of multiracial, mixed populations such as the gauchos, llaneros, and other people who were branded as “bandits” as they were not part of the idealized westernized nation. This complex conflict can also be read as a last struggle between two competing colonizing models in the Americas: the receding Hispanic Catholic rural/feudal model and the liberal “free-trade” capitalist model emerging from the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, represented by the United States in the hemisphere. Both socio-cultural models generated new mappings and diverse political narratives throughout the Americas: Hispanic and Hispanicized bandits created postcolonial cultural symbols of resistance to modernity capable of crossing borders. Joaquín Murrieta and Billy the Kid are extraordinary examples of the complex processes by which mythified and vilified bandits become multicultural transnational symbols. These phenomena are thoroughly studied here through the textual and contextual analysis of Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (1845); El Zarco (1869); Martín Fierro (1872); Doña Bárbara (1929); The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit (1854); Vida y aventuras del más célebre bandido sonorense Joaquín Murrieta: sus grandes proezas en California (1904); Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta (1967); The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid (1882) and El bandido adolescente (1965). The peripheral individuals inhabiting these cultural and political borderlines raise important issues of nation, race, state and social identities and allow us to interrogate better the complex processes of Latin American and US national formation. This incursion into the cultural histories of these heterogeneous social conflicts in the Americas during a period of national expansion and construction also seeks to put in conversation diverse intellectual perspectives from the Global North and South.

Durante a Copa do Mundo de 2010, a marca de cerveja Brahma, patrocinadora oficial da seleção brasileira de futebol, veiculou filmes publicitários construindo a imagem do jogador em campo como guerreiro e herói nacional. O presente trabalho busca analisar como o discurso da marca utiliza a jornada do herói no futebol para criar uma esfera de identificação da Brahma com o esporte, o herói e os consumidores, inseridos no contexto do país do futebol. O corpus de estudo é composto dos sete filmes da Brahma veiculados antes e durante a Copa do Mundo, entre novembro de 2009 e julho de 2010: Brasil contra o resto do mundo; Lista de pedidos; Recado; Poucas palavras; Raízes; Flâmulas; e Em 2010 não deu. Os filmes apresentam temáticas relacionadas à guerra, ao ufanismo e ao consumo durante o campeonato mundial de futebol, que ilustram recursos publicitários fundamentais para o entendimento dos signos e arquétipos que contribuíram para a construção do Guerreiro Brahmeiro na proposta na campanha da Brahma. Para a análise, adotamos metodologia com base na semiótica discursiva e nos arquétipos da jornada do herói mitológico.

Durante a Copa do Mundo de 2010, a marca de cerveja Brahma, patrocinadora oficial da seleção brasileira de futebol, veiculou filmes publicitários construindo a imagem do jogador em campo como guerreiro e herói nacional. O presente trabalho busca analisar como o discurso da marca utiliza a jornada do herói no futebol para criar uma esfera de identificação da Brahma com o esporte, o herói e os consumidores, inseridos no contexto do país do futebol. O corpus de estudo é composto dos sete filmes da Brahma veiculados antes e durante a Copa do Mundo, entre novembro de 2009 e julho de 2010: Brasil contra o resto do mundo; Lista de pedidos; Recado; Poucas palavras; Raízes; Flâmulas; e Em 2010 não deu. Os filmes apresentam temáticas relacionadas à guerra, ao ufanismo e ao consumo durante o campeonato mundial de futebol, que ilustram recursos publicitários fundamentais para o entendimento dos signos e arquétipos que contribuíram para a construção do Guerreiro Brahmeiro na proposta na campanha da Brahma. Para a análise, adotamos metodologia com base na semiótica discursiva e nos arquétipos da jornada do herói mitológico.

This thesis is an attempt to evaluate the evidence for and against the presence of a hero in King John. As such, it is actually a search into the artistic abilities which Shakespeare exercised in this drama to determine whether he created a dramatic work of art which merits recognition for its own sake.