Literary notes about Protagonist (AI summary)
The term "protagonist" in literature extends beyond a simple hero to signify the central force or figure around which a narrative unfolds. It often refers to the leading character whose inner passions and conflicts drive the dramatic action, as seen in discussions of tragic heroes whose personal failures and emotional turbulences are highlighted ([1],[2]). Yet, the label can also be applied more abstractly to represent ideological, allegorical, or even historical figures who embody the driving spirit of a work, such as a revolutionary thinker or a symbolic personification of a nation ([3],[4],[5],[6]). Moreover, the protagonist’s role is sometimes nuanced or secondary in nature, serving as a focal point to which contrasting characters or themes are juxtaposed ([7],[8],[9]). This flexibility in usage allows the term to capture a wide spectrum of narrative centrality, from literal stage figures to emblematic forces in cultural and intellectual dramas ([10],[11]).
- In both plays, the domination of the protagonist by a passion, its conflicting joys and sorrows, and its final failure become points for emphasis.
— from Tragedy by Ashley Horace Thorndike - He made the soul the protagonist of life’s tragedy, and looked on action as the one undramatic element of a play.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde - The poem was to be an allegory, and in making himself its protagonist Dante assumed a double part.
— from Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 - The second was the mechanistic system, or systems, the protagonist of which was Descartes.
— from Towards the Great Peace by Ralph Adams Cram - The most important protagonist of physical science during Columbus' Century, however, was undoubtedly Copernicus.
— from The Century of Columbus by James J. (James Joseph) Walsh - Upon this view, of which the most distinguished protagonist was Weismann, natural selection is the sole arbiter of animal and plant form.
— from Mimicry in Butterflies by Reginald Crundall Punnett - Here it is not the protagonist who makes away with himself, nor is his destiny the main theme of the play.
— from Play-Making: A Manual of Craftsmanship by William Archer - Inevitable and insoluble as the situation was, neither protagonist is entirely sympathetic, whether in the play or in history.
— from Alfred Tennyson by Andrew Lang - Pope is our next worthy; and of three or four pillars on which his name as a critic rests, one is his character of the Protagonist.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 353, March 1845 by Various - It was part of a tremendous drama, in which Omnipotence itself was protagonist.
— from The Crest-Wave of Evolution A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-19 by Kenneth Morris - Our principal authority for them is the Bṛihad-Âraṇyaka Upanishad of which he is the protagonist, much as Socrates is of the Platonic dialogues.
— from Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1 by Eliot, Charles, Sir
