Return to Satan: for an archeology of the anti-hero, from deuteragonist to protagonist

Abstract

This "invasion of the ugly" had already been preceded by that of the monsters of the nineteenth-century novel from Frankenstein to Mr. Hyde to Dracula and even earlier by the obscure characters of the late eighteenth-century English gothic novel. Nonetheless, the anti-hero marked by deep psychological wounds and a violent and brutal physicality, which accentuate his moral ambiguity, actually has even deeper roots. Where, then, does this return of the ugly, of the ever-increasing villains in the forms of contemporary fiction come from?