Guido Paduano: La nascita dell'eroe
Literary criticism

Birth of the Hero

Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas: the Origins of Western Culture


ISBN: 9788817020688
publisher: BUR Rizzoli
year: 2008
pages: 208

 

What do Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas have in common? What makes them heroes? What places them at the center of the story? And that charisma they impose on other characters and with which they lend a magnetic appeal to the story, where does it come from? Guido Padano examines the heroic figures of the three great epic poems of Antiquity (Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid) identifying recurring elements and pointing out exceptions, until he draws a character model that is as consistent as it is heterogeneous from time to time. A journey into the morphology of the hero to get back in touch with a world that has always belonged to us: Greek and Latin classicism.

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