The hero as a cultural trope and a passage system. Reading artistic texts in the light of sagas

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the figure of the hero in the theoretical framework provided by Semiotics of Culture and Rhetorics of Culture (Barei, 2008). The hero is seen as a trope in which complex processes of memory and cultural creation are condensed. We seek to analyze in three artistic contemporary texts in which the hero functions as a metaphor for social and historical values and events, and in turn becomes a link among texts. Observing different languages and texts, the hero produces both predictable and unpredictable meanings in which he behaves both as a “nomad” (Maffesoli, 2004) and a “barbarian” (Baricco, 2009). Thus, the hero becomes a “passage hero”; this notion allows for reflecting about the trope of the hero from myth to literature and others texts. The hero causes order and disorder, and produces a cultural topos, i.e. a place where new representations either drift apart, or cause fracture and disruption. Such a topos is thus a nomadic or a barbaric place, respectively. With this set of analytical categories, this article intends to have the trope of the hero explain complex cultural texts.