Bøger af Kathryn Frazell

This culminating project examines Byronic heroes using psychoanalytic theory across four casestudies in media, including classic literature, theater, film, and television. The Byronic hero is aliterary archetype inspired by the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824). Typicalcharacteristics include angst, arrogance, cunning intelligence, criminality, desire, passion, dominance,and otherness. The characters I have chosen to study include Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre (1847),the Phantom from the 2004 film The Phantom of the Opera, James Bond from the 2012 film Skyfall,and Damon Salvatore from the hit television series The Vampire Diaries (2009-2017). Throughexamining the actions of these characters through a psychoanalytic lens, I argue that the Byronichero is driven by his experience of intense loss and state of melancholia, as defined by Freud. Whena subject is in a state of melancholia, they have lost an ideal or love object, and they fail to move onwith this intense loss. They become outcasts of society through this loss. In addition to Freud, I alsoincorporate psychoanalytic theories and ideas from Melanie Klein and Silvan Tomkins. The purposeof my study is to examine how Byronic heroes, who are in a state of melancholia, deal with thelosses they have suffered from.