The Ironic-Romantic Hero in Frazier’s Cold Mountain and Roth’s Nemesis

Abstract:

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The present research discusses postmodernism’s subversion of the notion of romance, particularly the romantic hero figure. It puts forward irony as the vehicle for shifting the traditional stature of the hero, and his successful errand towards the anti-hero as the apotheosis of doom and failure. The paper suggests history’s force of abruptness as undeniable in the unsuccessful quest of the hero through the shattering historical events Charles Frazier (1950-) and Philip Roth (1933-) create in their modern novels, Cold Mountain (1997) and Nemesis (2010). It furthermore gets in-depth within the romantic psyche of both heroes to get across that their ‘consciousness’ is, in fact, mythical and not historical. Absence of historical consciousness in these characters, it is explained, participates considerably in the collapse which gets them eventually. Even the pastoral round which their aspiration hovers becomes a site for death and paralysis instead of the rejuvenation they sought after passionately. The larger canvas is then that of strife between romance and history, dream and reality drawn by the postmodern spirit inclination towards the double and the upturned.