The Heroine with 1,001 Faces

How do we explain our newfound cultural investment in empathy and social justice? For decades, Joseph Campbell had defined our cultural aspirations in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, emphasising the value of seeking glory and earning immortality. His work became the playbook for Hollywood, with its many male-centric quest narratives.

Unsatisfied with Campbell's once-canonical work, Maria Tatar explores how heroines, rarely wielding a sword and deprived of a pen, have flown beneath the radar even as they have been bent on social missions. Using the domestic arts and storytelling skills, they have displayed audacity, curiosity and care as they struggled to survive and change the reigning culture. Animating figures from Ovid's Philomela, her tongue severed yet still weaving a tale about sexual assault, to Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander, a high-tech wizard seeking justice for victims of a serial killer, The Heroine with 1,001 Faces creates a luminous arc that takes us from ancient times to the present.

About the author

Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Research Professor and a Senior Fellow at Harvard University. The editor of the Norton Critical Edition of The Classic Fairy Tales and The Annotated Brothers Grimm, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product details

• Authors: Maria Tatar, Maria (Harvard University) Tatar
• Publisher: Norton and Co Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.10.2021
• EAN: 9781631498817
• ISBN: 978-1-63149-881-7
• Dimensions: 165 mm x 235 mm x 30 mm
• Series: Liveright
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Fairytales, sagas, legends; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies