Re: ML interview by RN

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine wrote:
>
> FWIW, the MS thesaurus tells me that "protagonist" has "hero" as a
> synonym

Like most synonyms, this one is inexact -- perhaps inexact to the point
of being incorrect.

Not all heroes, in life and fiction, are protgonists of their 'story,'
and while _most_ protagonists in fiction are also, in some sense, heros
(or heroines) many are not -- and quite a few are heros only in the
sense of being heroic villains. Best I can come up with off the top of
my head "is person or group who make the story move -- who initiate and
are the center of the action. X is The Story of P: Whatever single
term     can substitute for P names the protagonist of the story
(fictional or 'real life'). If there is no one term that really fits P
-- then it is a story without a protagonist -- something like
Althusser's history without an agent. ("Central agent" would be a rough
synonym for protagonist.)

"Protagonistic" sounds like an interesting coinage. And of course, it
does have an antonym, "Antagonist" and "antagonistic." (The root, agon,
means struggle, roughtly.)

Carrol