Shakespeare's Heroes

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What do we mean by a hero and where does our understanding of the ‘heroic’ idiom come from?

In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will show how Shakespeare’s idea of the hero was shaped by the classical tradition, going back to the ancient tale of Troy and Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid. But in Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida we meet a Shakespeare who was profoundly sceptical about the heroic ideal.

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Part of:

Classic Shakespeare

This event was on Tue, 28 Nov 2017

History

Literature

Medieval

Theatre

Professor Sir Jonathan Bate

Professor of Rhetoric

Professor Bate is Gresham Professor of Rhetoric. He is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, novelist and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism.

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