Antiheroes aren't born, they're made: story arc and storytelling in antihero tales

Abstract

This book makes a conceptual and historical tour of the main antiheroes and antiheroines and the narrative universes in which their respective story arcs are developed. The author is not limited to one medium or genre, so we can find an in-depth analysis of a varied cast of characters from novels, movies, series, video games, comics, or even the music industry. The main objective of the book is to update the concept of antihero in the face of the different interpretations that have been given throughout the work, as well as to confront the classic narrative structure of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey (1949) against the stages of the antihero story. As a result, Freire proposes a classification of the types of antihero and establishes the features to finally update the concept of antihero, as well as some narrative principles that serve as a model for the construction of antiheroic characters.