Any work of art is built according to certain laws and rules. If in the era of classicism they were quite strict, other trends in art allowed writers to feel more free in creative flight, variously expressing their intent. However, even the most abnormal directions in the literature present certain requirements to the work. For example, a novel must have a certain idea, and a lyrical poem should carry an emotional-aesthetic load. An important role in the work is assigned to the literary hero.
Term meaning
Let's figure out who the literary hero is, what he is. In the broadest sense of the term, this is the person who is depicted in a novel, story or story, in a dramatic work. This character who lives and acts on the pages of the book and not only. His literary hero was, for example, in ancient Russian epics, i.e. In pre-literary genres and types of artistic words. As an example, I can recall Ilya Muromets, Nikita Kozhemyak, Mikul Selyaninovich. Naturally, they are not images of specific people. That's the peculiarity of the term, that it means the totality, the collectivity of a number of persons united by certain close character traits and qualities. Melted in the creative laboratory of the author, they represent a single monolith, unique and recognizable. So, if an ordinary person is asked what a literary hero of a Russian folk fairy tale should be, he will rely on the images of Vasilisa and Baba Yaga, Koshchei and Ivan Tsarevich in his descriptions. A social and everyday fairy tale, of course, will not do without Ivanushka the fool. The same established types exist in the folklore of any people. In the mythology of Ancient Greece, these are the gods, Hercules, Prometheus. Scandinavian storytellers have One, etc. Consequently, the concept of "literary hero" is international, intercultural, timeless. It exists within the framework of any creative process connected with the artistic word.
Hero and character, actor
The next question, which naturally arises, is this: "Is the character of a work, or its character always a literary hero, always?" Critics, researchers respond to it negatively. In order for this or that image, created by the author, to turn into a hero, he must meet a number of requirements. First of all, the presence of their own, distinctive qualities and personality traits, through which he will not get lost in the environment of his own kind. For example, the well-known literary hero Munchausen (author of Raspe) is a witty inventor who himself believes in his fantastic stories. It can not be confused with any other characters. Or Goethe's Faust, the personification of the eternal search for truth, the mind, hungry for new higher knowledge. Usually such literary heroes are also the main characters of artistic texts.
To the question of classification
Now let's look at the typology of the images we are interested in. What are literary heroes? Conditionally they are divided into positive and negative, main and secondary, lyrical, epic, dramatic. Often they are also the bearers of the main idea of the work. The more serious the image, the larger it is, the larger, the more difficult it is to bring under it an unambiguous assessment. So Pugachev in Pushkin's "Captain's Daughter" - a villain, cruel murderer, but also a people's defender, fair, not deprived of his code of honor and nobility.
Thus, the hero in the literature is a holistic, meaningful, finished phenomenon.