PRIVATE CONSCIENCE AND PUBLIC OBLIGATION: THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF HEROIC IDENTITY IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
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Abstract
This article examines the relationship between heroic identity and social structure in selected canonical works of English and American literature, arguing that the most fundamental difference between the two traditions lies not in their heroic values but in their understanding of where heroic significance resides: in the social consequences of heroic action, or in the private quality of the hero's inner experience. Analysing Beowulf, Hamlet, Middlemarch, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Old Man and the Sea, the article demonstrates that English literary heroism is consistently oriented toward communal consequence and social obligation, while American literary heroism is consistently oriented toward private conscience and individual self-determination. The article further proposes that this structural difference is reinforced at the level of heroic discourse: the English hero's characteristic verbal plenitude and the American hero's characteristic verbal economy constitute rhetorical enactments of their respective social orientations. The article concludes by considering the implications of this difference for comparative literary scholarship and for contemporary understandings of the relationship between individual excellence and social responsibility.
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