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Confederate Civil War Photographers Propagators And The Hero Myth, Ronald L. Crusan

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Myths are metaphors. They are stories, sometimes handed down through hundreds of years, which help put man or a culture in accord with nature, to reconcile mankind to the harsh realities of life. Society's heroes, acting through the archetypal hero monomyth, serve as the personification of a culture's mythology. Through the hero, a society may reconcile with nature and those external forces which influence our lives.

This paper examines the historical development of the hero myth, the archetypal hero role that Robert E. Lee filled for the Southern people during the American civil War and the role that photography played …