The Epic Hero

Rating:
Summary: Don't look further...
Review: If you're searching for the definitive compendium about all aspects of epic heroism, this is the one book to buy. The author quotes famous as well as lesser-known epic stories, drawing mainly from Norse, Welsh, French, Balkanian and Persian sources among others, profoundly analyzing and interpreting the cultural specialities of their protagonists as well as their striking similarities, sometimes pronouncing obscure and even humorous aspects and episodes. The book is academical and down-to-earth with a lot of footnotes and cross-references, don't expect an esoterical, over-simplifying Campbellian take on the subject matter. Thankfully, Miller keeps a certain ironic distance which results in a more entertaining read than I expected. For writers, especially in the movie business, "The Epic Hero" can be a real treasure, a source of immense inspiration - not from the structural point of view, but regarding the many details, themes and characters Dean A. Miller puts on display here in his great effort. I consider it the perfect companion (though not a surrogate due to its different scholaric approach) to Christopher Vogler's "The Writer's Journey" of which it sometimes appears to be an accidental yet very valuable continuation.

Rating:
Summary: A Scholarly Frolic through the World of the Hero
Review: The first thing that hit me in this book was its exuberance. It reminds me of "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony" for its sheer joy in pressing ahead. Miller isn't afraid to let his sense of humor show, either. But, no mistake, this is a serious work of scholarship, deep and detailed.

The book starts off with an evolution of the hero, from the Greeks, through chivalry, the Renaissance, straight on to present day's concerns with the hero as he gets explained by anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

The next chapters deal with elements in the hero's life and adventures: his remarkable birth, strength as a youth, threatening family, problematic sex life and requisite death; his landscape, both exterior and interior, and his relation to the otherworld, to his quest, and to his king. Variations of the quest are laid out, including its structure in time (maturational, sequential, and the effect of the otherworld on times of day and year), and the hero's costars (helper, sovereign and woman).

In a chapter ironically titled "The Hero 'Speaks'" we find the many nonverbal ways the hero is expressed and described, from physique and coloration, to gesture, to weapon and armor, combat, and finally to actual speech, which is generally just as violent as his actions.

Next Miller takes up other characters the hero comes upon (or sometimes is), including the trickster, the smith, and the comic coward. He further discusses color and the hero, with an interesting passage on black, green, and other knights.

The hero exists on the edges of our experience; his relation to the shaman, to the gods, and the line between life and death, are discussed next.

The conclusion draws all this together into a series of graphs that show the connections of different hero types, the hero to royalty or to a trickster, and to the other characters in his life.

I read this book hoping for another point of view after reading Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" and other related books. I assume most readers who, like me, are not academics, will find this book for much the same reason. So some comments about the two works might be worthwhile.

Miller is not trying to draw all of human experience and mythology into some single linear form. As he says, he isn't interested in the monomyth. He limits his discussion to epics with Indo-European roots. This is a comforting strategy when set against Campbell's inclusion (and shaping) of many many cultures, with the problems that raises.

He also doesn't limit the discussion to what fits. Some heros, for example, will have childhoods that make it obvious they're something special, but some don't fit that mold, and may be entirely unpromising.

The problem (well, my problem) with Campbell is the limitation of the monomyth; not only is the story line constricted, its psychological meanings are too concerned with Freud and Jung. When you hear someone say that in myth, water represents X, suddenly this becomes a game of finding the correct meaning for the symbol, makes *everything* a symbol, and leaves me feeling like I've been watching a fortuneteller explaining away dreams. Surely by now we can subscribe to a different view of psychology, symbolism and meaning.

Miller, by refusing to create a central character and storyline that will explain all his examples, lets the literature be as vibrant as it wants to be, as problematic and multivalent. I found myself wishing at times that instead, he would create multiple spines for stories, a limited but useful number. This would sacrifice accuracy, but would offer more anchors for the discussion. I suppose I came to his book expecting a multimyth rather than monomyth, but that's not his intention. Then again, he gives the apparatus for constructing that kind of multimyth on one's own, so maybe that need can be fulfilled after all.

This is a lively, bountiful book, scholarly, aware of the possible pitfalls, and exuberant in its pursuit of the hero in all his epic forms.