Antihero

This article is about the character type. For the 1999 action film, see Anti-hero (film). For the punk band, see Anti-Heros.

In literature, an antihero (or antiheroine as the female) is a protagonist who has no heroic virtues or qualities (such as being morally good, idealistic, courageous, noble, and possessing fortitude), blurring the line between hero and villain. The Byronic hero sets a literary precedent for the modern concept of antiheroism.

History

The term antihero is first dated to 1714, although literary criticism identifies the concept in earlier literature, such as that of the ancient Greek dramatists as well as Don Quixote in 1605.

The concept of the antihero has evolved over time, changing as society's concept of the traditional hero has changed^{[citation needed]} from the Elizabethan times of Faust and William Shakespeare's Falstaff,^{[citation needed]} through the eighteenth century example of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), to the darker-themed Victorian literature of the 19th century, such as Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug.^{[citation needed]} Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1959) both include antiheroic protagonists.

See also

• List of fictional antiheroes

Further reading

• Simmons, David (2008). The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Heller to Vonnegut. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-230-60323-8.