Der Held ist eine (männliche) Auf-Zeichnung. Vorwort

Irene Nierhaus The Hero as a (Male) Chronicle. PrefaceThis issue focuses on twentieth-century and contemporary images of mythical fighters. It explores the heroic and its figurations and how these are generated by various media and their particular aesthetic structures. Contributors not only discuss the appearance of such figures in built-up and public spaces, but also explore the discursives spaces in which such figures are appraised and mapped out. Examples are considered beyond their own terms of reference so as to establish i their image-constituting, social, political, cultural, and gendered framings and narrative strategies. What emerges is a deeper insight into how the specific elements and props constituting such figurations (muscles, steel, armour, alignment, etc.) intersect with character attributions (illustrious, strong, courageous, combative, undaunted, assertive, etc.) in specific historical situations and discourses and are thereby (trans)formed in situ (in)to the heroic.