“I want a hero …” – Deconstructions of the Hero in Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century British and Irish Fiction

Abstract

Since the 19 th century modern literature has been characterized by the deconstruction and loss of the hero. While Carlyle aims at a re-definition of heroism and Hardy prefers to see the fate of his characters in the context of Greek tragedy, both Jerome K. Jerome and H. G. Wells show the world inhabited by grotesque and tragicomic anti-heroes. Deprived of volitional motion and constantly faced with abortive plans, they blunder through life on intractable bicycles which are the modern equivalents of the Wheel of Fortune. In contrast to the 18 th -century picaresque tradition, in which the anti-hero's misery is frequently mitigated by sentimentality, Joyce's 'Hades' episode in Ulysses intensifies the 19 th -century heritage of anthropological scepticism so that man is ultimately reduced to an assortment of rotting limbs and organs breeding maggots and death-moths.