List Of Fictional Antiheroes
This list is for characters in fictional works who exemplify the qualities of an antihero—a protagonist or supporting character whose characteristics include the following: *imperfections that separate them from typically heroic characters (such as selfishness, cynicism, ignorance, and bigotry); *lack of positive qualities such as "courage, physical prowess, and fortitude", and "generally feel helpless in a world over which they have no control"; *qualities considered dark traits, usually belonging to villains, (amorality, greed, violent tendencies, etc.) that may be tempered with more human, identifiable traits that blur the moral lines between the protagonist and antagonist An antagonist is a character in a story who is presented as the main enemy or rival of the protagonist and is often depicted as a villain. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fiction
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying character (arts), individuals, events, or setting (narrative), places that are imagination, imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with fact, history, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, fiction refers to literature, written narratives in prose often specifically novels, novellas, and short story, short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any Media (communication), medium, including not just writings but also drama, live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games. Definition and theory Typically, the fictionality of a work is publicly expressed, so the audience expects a work of fiction to deviate to a greater or lesser degree from the real world, rather than presenting for instance only factually accurate portrayals or character (arts ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy ''Macbeth'' (). As the wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth (a Scottish nobleman), Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. Some regard her as becoming more powerful than Macbeth when she does this, because she is able to manipulate him into doing what she wants. After Macbeth becomes a murderous tyrant, she is driven to madness by guilt over their crimes and kills herself offstage. Lady Macbeth is a powerful presence in the play, most notably in the first two acts. Following the murder of King Duncan, however, her role in the plot diminishes. She becomes an uninvolved spectator to Macbeth's plotting and a nervous hostess at a banquet dominated by her husband's hallucinations. Her sleepwalking scene in the fifth act is a turning point in the play, and her line "Out, damned spot!" has become a phrase familiar to many speakers of the English langu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vanity Fair (novel)
''Vanity Fair'' is a novel by the English author William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial novel, serial (the last containing Parts 19 ''and'' 20) from 1847 to 1848, carrying the subtitle ''Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society'', which reflects both its satire, satirisation of early 19th-century British society and the many illustrations drawn by Thackeray to accompany the text. It was published as a single volume in 1848 with the subtitle ''A Novel without a Hero'', reflecting Thackeray's interest in Deconstruction (literature), deconstructing his era's conventions regarding Hero#Modern fiction, literary heroism.. It is sometimes considered the "principal founder" of the Victorian domestic novel. The story is frame story, framed as a puppet play, and the narrator, despite being an authorial voice, is somewha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Becky Sharp (character)
Rebecca "Becky" Sharp, later describing herself as Rebecca, Lady Crawley, is the main protagonist of William Makepeace Thackeray's 1847–48 novel '' Vanity Fair''. She is presented as a cynical social climber who uses her charms to fascinate and seduce upper-class men. This is in contrast with the clinging, dependent Amelia Sedley, her friend from school. Becky then uses Amelia as a stepping stone to gain social position. Sharp functions as a ''picara''—a picaresque heroine—by being a social outsider who is able to expose the manners of the gentry to ridicule. The book—and Sharp's career—begins in a traditional manner of Victorian fiction, that of a young orphan (Sharp) with no source of income who has to make her own way in the world. Thackeray twisted the Victorian tradition, however, and quickly turned her into a young woman who knew what she wanted from life—fine clothes, money and a social position—and knew how to get them. The route was to be by marriage, an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Nicholls (; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855), commonly known as Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ), was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë family, Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She is best known for her novel ''Jane Eyre'', which she published under the male pseudonym Currer Bell. ''Jane Eyre'' went on to become a success in publication, and is widely held in high regard in the gothic fiction genre of literature. Brontë enrolled in school at Roe Head, Mirfield, in January 1831, aged 14 years. She left the year after to teach her sisters, Emily Brontë, Emily and Anne Brontë, Anne, at home, then returned to Roe Head in 1835 as a teacher. In 1839, she undertook the role of governess for the Sidgwick family, but left after a few months. The three sisters attempted to open a school in Haworth but failed to attract pupils. Instead, they turned to writing; they each first publ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jane Eyre
''Jane Eyre'' ( ; originally published as ''Jane Eyre: An Autobiography'') is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published in January 1848 by Harper & Brothers of New York. ''Jane Eyre'' is a bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its Jane Eyre (character), eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall. The novel revolutionised prose fiction, being the first to focus on the moral and spiritual development of its protagonist through an intimate first-person narrative, where actions and events are coloured by a psychological intensity. Charlotte Brontë has been called the "first historian of the private consciousness" and the literary ancestor of writers such as Marcel Proust and James Joyce. The book contains elements of social criticism with a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Edward Rochester
Edward Fairfax Rochester (often referred to as Mr Rochester) is a character in Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel ''Jane Eyre''. The brooding master of Thornfield Hall, Rochester is the employer and eventual husband of the novel's titular protagonist, Jane Eyre (character), Jane Eyre. He is regarded as an archetypal Byronic hero. In ''Jane Eyre'' Edward Rochester is the oft-absent master of Thornfield Hall, where Jane Eyre (character), Jane Eyre is employed as a governess to his young Ward (law), ward, Jane Eyre#Chapter 11, Adèle Varens. Jane first meets Rochester while on a walk, when his horse slips and he injures his foot. He does not reveal to Jane his identity and it is only that evening back at the house that Jane learns he is Mr Rochester. Rochester and Jane are immediately interested in each other. She is fascinated by his rough, dark appearance as well as his abrupt manner. Rochester is intrigued by Jane's strength of character, comparing her to an elf or sprite (folklor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray ( ; 18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was an English novelist and illustrator. He is known for his Satire, satirical works, particularly his 1847–1848 novel ''Vanity Fair (novel), Vanity Fair'', a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel ''The Luck of Barry Lyndon'', which was Barry Lyndon, adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick. Thackeray was born in Calcutta, British India, and was sent to England after his father's death in 1815. He studied at various schools and briefly attended Trinity College, Cambridge, before leaving to travel Europe. Thackeray squandered much of his inheritance on gambling and unsuccessful newspapers. He turned to journalism to support his family, primarily working for ''Fraser's Magazine'', ''The Times'', and ''Punch (magazine), Punch''. His wife Isabella suffered from mental illness. Thackeray gained fame with his novel ''Vanity Fair'' and produced several other notable works. He unsuccessfully ran f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Luck Of Barry Lyndon
''The Luck of Barry Lyndon'' is a picaresque novel by English author William Makepeace Thackeray, first published as a serial in '' Fraser's Magazine'' in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Thackeray, who based the novel on the life and exploits of the Anglo-Irish rake and fortune-hunter Andrew Robinson Stoney, later reissued it under the title ''The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.'' The novel is narrated by Lyndon himself, who functions as a quintessentially unreliable narrator. The novel was adapted by Stanley Kubrick into his 1975 film ''Barry Lyndon''. The name Barry is a surname and a masculine given name, the English form of the Irish name Bareth (itself an abbreviation of Fionnbharrth), Barra, Barrath, Barenth, Barold, Bearrach, or Finbarr. The word, from the Irish Celtic bearach, means "spear" in English. Thackeray was fond of this name during his travels in Ireland, although at the time he had not yet mad ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jean Racine
Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ; ; 22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille, as well as an important literary figure in the Western tradition and world literature. Racine was primarily a tragedian, producing such "examples of neoclassical perfection" as '' Phèdre'', '' Andromaque'', and '' Athalie''. He did write one comedy, '' Les Plaideurs'', and a muted tragedy, '' Esther'', for the young. Racine's plays displayed his mastery of the dodecasyllabic (12 syllable) French alexandrine. His writing is renowned for its elegance, purity, speed, and fury, and for what American poet Robert Lowell described as a "diamond-edge", and the "glory of its hard, electric rage". Racine's dramaturgy is marked by his psychological insight, the prevailing passion of his characters, and the nakedness of both plot and stage. Biography Racine was born on 21 December 1639 in La Ferté- ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Phèdre
''Phèdre'' (; originally ''Phèdre et Hippolyte'') is a French dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677 at the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. Composition and premiere With ''Phèdre'', Racine chose once more a subject from Greek mythology, already treated by Greek and Roman tragic poets, notably by Euripides in '' Hippolytus'' and Seneca in ''Phaedra''. As a result of an intrigue by the Duchess of Bouillon and other friends of the aging Pierre Corneille, the play was not a success at its première on 1 January 1677 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, home of the royal troupe of actors in Paris. Indeed, a rival group staged a play by the now forgotten playwright Nicolas Pradon on an almost identical theme. After ''Phèdre'', Racine ceased writing plays on secular themes and devoted himself to the service of religion and the king until 1689, when he was commissioned to write ''Esther'' by Madame de Maintenon, th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'' was written in blank verse and included 12 books, written in a time of immense religious flux and political upheaval. It addressed the fall of man, including the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan, and God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden. ''Paradise Lost'' elevated Milton's reputation as one of history's greatest poets. He also served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. Milton achieved fame and recognition during his lifetime. His celebrated '' Areopagitica'' (1644) condemning pre-publication censorship is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. His desire for freedom extended beyond his philosophy and was reflected in his style, which included his introduction of new words ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |