How can it be that, in this day and age, in the western world, most heroic narratives — which usually shape or reflect deeply held views about ethics — assume an honor culture while, at the same time most of its content (e.g revenge, retribution) generally seem anathema nowadays?
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Replying to @ArthurB
I think popular media mostly has continued to make stories around archaic implicit norms (lone heroes, revenge, aristocracy, etc) while indicating that these stories are fanciful (setting them in the past or in magical or alien worlds, irony as in “fractured fairy tales”.)
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ArthurB
Literary stories have experimented with non-heroic stories that don’t have a linear narrative rising to a climax, but I don’t think those have ever been as popular.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ArthurB
Does anybody actually think Robbe-Grillet is *fun* to read? That’s what a story structure looks like that really rejects the premise of the heroic epic.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ArthurB
Ensemble-cast, realistic novels (eg Tolstoy or George Eliot) get away from the epic format somewhat, and can be engaging to read, but iirc they were never *mass-market* hits; they require a more educated reader.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ArthurB
(This isn’t a high-culture/low-culture distinction exactly. Shakespeare was popular in his time; and his plays *are* epics, though they subvert the tropes.)
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ArthurB
Ursula K. LeGuin’s “the carrier bag theory of fiction” is about what fiction without heroes would look like:https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Carrier_Bag_Theory_of_Fiction.html?id=tzymyQEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description …
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ArthurB
I think she did an unusually good job of writing fiction that structurally reflected her Taoist and feminist commitments and is still actually enjoyable to read. But my first time around I still found it strangely...understated. There are heroes but there’s no rise in tension.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @ArthurB
Here’s
@vgr’s riff on the idea:https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/01/09/boat-stories/ …1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
Of course, I’ve reacted pretty strongly against the literary temperament and towards the archaic/heroic: I think we *should* narratize life as being about Big Damn (super)Heroes who save the day by punching, and screw nuance. Nuance only slows you down.
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