Do the criteria for being a hero change as social mores of various cultures do?
Gros Louis: Absolutely. A couple of examples. Brutus and Cassius are in the lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno, being chewed eternally in the mouth of Lucifer. But in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Brutus, while not a hero, comes close to being one. For Ovid, Icarus foolishly did not follow his father’s advice and take the middle way. For medieval culture, Icarus was thus not a hero. In the Renaissance, however, Icarus’s daring exploit is held up as a mark of respect. Another figure is Ulysses who, while placed in Dante’s Inferno, is clearly then seen negatively, but hundreds of years later in a poem by Tennyson, seems to be portrayed as someone we should admire. When I ask my class who are our contemporary heroes, they mention people like Gandhi, Mother Therese, perhaps the Pope, but certainly no living political figure. Clearly, many factors, including religious and social, economic, even peace and war, affect the same figure in the same story over the ages. Home Pages: We don’t get
