The fatal hero: Diana, deity of the moon, as an archetype of the modern hero in English literature. (Volumes I and II).

摘要

In this study, I investigate the nature and the function of heroic characters who are modelled on the goddess Diana in modern literature. These heroes I have generically titled Diana-types, and the type exists everywhere, in the works of almost every major writer as well as a host of minor ones. She is in particular an important figure because she assumes in modern literature an apocalyptic role that is crucial to many of the works in which she appears.;Moreover, this apocalyptic Diana-type, while usually female, functions in many cases not as a heroine but as a hero. That is, she assumed to herself the powers of action and apocalypse that had traditionally been assigned to male protagonists. My thesis analyzes these heroic powers in the modern Diana-type, and in the process explores the new relationship this Diana-hero bore to the traditional, and not displaced, male hero.;No one has, to my knowledge, so far done a study which identifies and examines the nature and function of the Diana-type as a hero in modern literature. There have only been isolated works limited to the analysis of the Diana-type as a "heroine" within a single work. A representative example is Dorothy Jones's "The Goddess, the Artist, and the Spinster," an article which clarifies the role of the goddess Diana as a model for the multiple heroines in Elizabeth Jolley's novel, Miss Peabody's Inheritance. My dissertation is now the first comprehensive critique of the Diana-hero's role in modern literature.;The works I cover in my dissertation include Keats's Endymion, Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy, James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, James Joyce's Ulysses, Henry James's Portrait of a Lady, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappiccini's Daughter," Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia," and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.