THE BYRONIC HERO MYTH RELOADED IN E. L. JAMES’S FIFTY SHADES OF GREYSERIES

Abstract

Assuming that the Byronic hero can be properly considered to be a literary myth and our contemporary popular culture keeps a constant interest in various ancient and modern myths by continuously rewriting and reshaping their thematic perspectives in its literary and not only products, the present study argues about and exemplifies these assumptions by focusing on E.L. James’s famous novel trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey. This study draws on the Byronic hero as depicted in the nineteenth-century literature and attempts to reveal how this literary representation continues to fascinate the contemporary artists and readers and is reshaped unexpectedly in the contemporary romance. The postmodern romance fuses high and low culture and this study presents the ways in which the novelist wittily combines mythical and literary heritages with the striking images allowed by the romance mode in order to convey some stringent concerns of the present day society, such as childhood abuse, trauma and violence. The myth of the Byronic hero, as expressed in E.L. James’s series, reveals a transformed version, a neo-Byronic protagonist who becomes adaptable to the norms of his community, is capable of moving beyond his trauma and is healed as a result of discovering his genuine love.