We Are All Individuals Together: On the Development of Cooperative Heroism in High Fantasy Fiction after Tolkien

Abstract

Heroes have always embodied societal values that are considered important at the time of the hero’s creation. The martial Achilles and the chivalrous Lancelot are archetypes of their respective times and cultures. Fantasy literature can in many ways be regarded as a direct successor of the classic epic and the medieval romance. We can thus imagine fantasy heroes to display societal values that are highly regarded in this day and age. In a 2016 paper, Thomas Honegger introduced the concept ‘cooperative heroism’ to the field of Tolkien scholarship, a large part of fantasy criticism. He argued that Tolkien’s famous The Lord of the Rings was a prime example of a new form of heroism that depended on the cooperation between individuals instead of the prowess of an individual as had been the case in many stories before Tolkien. This thesis sets up a diachronic comparison of heroes and hero teams before and after Tolkien, with Tolkien at the centre of the argument as introducer of this new form of heroism. Three other fantasy series will be examined (Raymond Feist, Tad Williams, Sarah J. Maas) to see how this form of heroism so focused on the collective has evolved over time and what this means for the representation of the hero in fantasy fiction. It will be argued that this new stress on cooperation between heroes shows distinct new ideas about the hero in our time, one that not only functions within a group, but needs a group to function.