LITERARY UNIVERSALS WEBLOG: A series of informal observations and conjectures aimed at fostering more reflection on and discussion about cross-cultural patterns in literature. 

Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut

Eric Hobsbawm was a prominent historian, perhaps best known to students of literature for his view that “traditions,” including some of those that people cherish as an essential part of their identities, are not in fact (longstanding) traditions, but surprisingly recent inventions (see his “Introduction”). In keeping with this iconoclastic strain in his thinking, despite recent historians’ aversion to universals, he isolated a narrative universal in his 1969 book, Bandits. As he wrote in his “Preface” to the 2000 edition of the book, “exactly the same stories and myths were told about certain types of bandits as bringers of justice and social redistribution . . . all over the globe” (Bandits ix). Hobsbawm elaborates on this claim over the following 225 pages, giving examples from England to Sicily and from Ethiopia to China, and making a compelling case for his hypothesis. In referring to “stories and myths,” he seems to have had in mind narratives in some degree based on historical persons (e.g., the Sicilian bandit, Salvatore Giuliano) and narratives without that grounding in reference to such a person (e.g., Robin Hood). This shows a broadly narrative universal, for it tells us something about the ways we shape our selection and elaboration of events outside of literary works, as well as within such works. One might wonder why he didn’t simply refer to fictional and non-fictional uses of the narrative universal. But that is easy to answer—the historical referents of these stories rarely even came close to the idealization in the stories that were putatively about them. Put simply, as viewers of Hollywood films are well aware, a story “based on” history is not, for that reason, non-fiction.

Caught up in the specifics of his examples and the sub-genres in which he arranges them, Hobsbawm nowhere gives a single, consistent account of precisely how this universal narrative unfolds. Fortunately, we are given enough information to piece together a prototypical form of this story, which I will refer to as the “bandit hero” narrative. One striking feature of this narrative is that it is defined to an unusual extent by character traits and character relations, rather than by a trajectory of events. Put differently, the universal story events seem to have resulted from the character interactions rather than the reverse. Instead of a narrative framed in terms of a conquered nation struggling for autonomy or a famine-stricken society seeking out what sacrifice will pacify an offended deity, we have a situation in which several types of characters, with their various cognitive routines and emotional dispositions, are thrown together until we see what happens due to their interactions. This is unsurprising, as these are two sorts of simulation. Often, we have goals—our own or someone else’s—and we want to simulate the possible long- or short-term success or failure of those goals. In such simulations, the obstacles may be particularly prominent, as we wish to anticipate and thereby, if possible, avoid them. This is the sort of simulation that appears fundamental to the story genres I have discussed (for example, stories of romantic love, or familial separation). In contrast, we sometimes simply simulate how a set of people will interact with one another (e.g., in putting together a guest list for a dinner party or determining seating for tables at a wedding). This division in simulation thus carries over into a division in narrative types, which we might characterize simply as plot-driven versus character-driven. Alternatively, if we take all narrative to be guided by characters, we could distinguish these types as, say, goal-driven versus personality-driven. Of course, the two can be mixed; indeed, they usually are in some degree, though one or the other commonly seems to dominate. Hobsbawm’s bandit hero universal is principally of the character-driven sort.

More precisely, the main character here is the bandit hero whose main characteristic is that he or she stands up against the enemy of the people (Bandits 156). As this suggests, the oppressed and/or exploited ordinary people form the milieu in which the characters interact. The bandit hero—like the legitimate ruler in the heroic genre—comes from the people and strives to return to them. Hobsbawm stresses that he or she holds the same views as the people—basically, conservative views—differing from them only in that the provocation exerted by oppression and/or exploitation leads the bandit hero to defy the masters. Such defiance is desired by the rest of the people. However, the others suppress the impulse, leaving it to the bandit hero to give voice to their longings.

Hobsbawm is careful to stress that this is not a progressive, revolutionary impulse. It is, rather—as I have already noted—conservative. Basically, there are two enemies of the people. First of all, there are the oppressors, those who deny the people freedom and autonomy. These are generally corrupt government officials, such as the judges in the great Chinese vernacular novel, The Water Margin (first published in 1368; see Lowe), who repeatedly have innocent people executed. Second, there are those who exploit the people, extracting their labor power, but leaving them impoverished and hungry. Despite these conditions, the bandit hero does not dream of a Socialist utopia. Rather, he or she dreams of the “good old days,” when the oppression and exploitation knew some limits. Hobsbawm gives the example of the so-called droit du seigneur. The bandit hero did not demand that the lord desist from requiring sexual favors from his tenants. The bandit hero demanded only that the lord follow the (lapsed) tradition of paying for the education of any children he may produce through such favors (Bandits 30). Even in his most progressive form, the bandit hero would not seek to alter the ownership structures, but only to engage in piecemeal redistribution by “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor”—a practice attributed not only to the (probably mythical) Robin Hood, but to a range of historical figures to whom it applied (at best) only occasionally and in part.

There is one exception to the bandit hero’s defiance of the decadent rich and the corrupt officials (extensively overlapping classes, in many, perhaps most cases)—that was his or her loyalty to the legitimate and supreme ruler (Bandits 48). This is part of the conservatism of the bandit hero and his popular supporters. It showed, from another angle, that they were not opposed to the (putatively legitimate) hierarchy of authority in society, just to the (recent) flouting of the rules governing that hierarchy. There is also one exception to the limited defiance espoused by the bandit hero and his or her supporters. Hobsbawm separates this into a subgenre—a subgenre in which the bandit hero appears as “the terror-bringing avenger” (Bandits 23, emphasis in the original). I would not have divided the structure into subgenres, as I believe that the seemingly distinctive features of the subgenres occur together in many works. For example, revenge can occur in virtually any story and does not seem segregated enough to be definitive of a type.

Somewhat surprisingly, Hobsbawm specifies an initial event which forms a frequent (though not invariable) beginning to the hero’s life of banditry. Fundamentally, it tells us what event so provoked the hero that he or she, alone among the people, stood up in defiance of the perverse authority of government or domination by wealth. This, he tells us, is often the defense of a woman’s honor (Bandits 149). That is basically the only event Hobsbawm gives us; for the rest, the universal narrative is implied by the characters (or character types—the hero, the people, and so on). However, we can fill in a few more possible events from the general structural principles that apply to a range of genres, along with narrative motifs, which is to say, events, actions, characters, themes, scenes, etc., that can be used in any genre.

One motif used with great frequency in the narrative middle is the exile of the hero. The frequency of this motif appears to result from its intensification of the sense of attachment loss by extending it from person attachment loss (e.g., the lovers losing each other, at least for a time) to place attachment loss. Unsurprisingly, a common feature of bandit hero stories is the exile from home following the initial encounter with the corrupt legal system (at least in some of the stories—those I am most familiar with, ranging from The Water Margin to the life of the Sicilian bandit hero, Salvatore Giuliano [see Chandler]—the relation between exile and the loss of attachment bonds is explicit). Thus, this motif is not unique to bandit hero narratives, but it does fit particularly well with those narratives.

Another frequent motif, often mistaken for a main story structure, is that of a journey. When it appears in bandit hero narratives, this is in some ways simply an elaboration of the exile motif. However, its narrative function is typically different. It does not so much serve to intensify an emotion as to link a series of distinct events or episodes that may or may not have an intrinsic relation to the primary goal of the main narrative (e.g., union with the beloved, in a romantic story). This is true even when the journey is a quest, which is to say, when it has a definitive goal, which is instrumental to primary goal (e.g., when the hero has to retrieve a unique weapon in order to defeat the invading enemy). This episodic quality is typical of stories emplotting the lives of historical figures, as their lives—like those of people generally—are quite episodic in reality.

I am certainly not an expert on this genre, as Hobsbawm clearly was. Even so, I am not sure that I agree with Hobsbawm about the thematic point—which is to say, the politics–of this narrative structure. I have no doubt that he is correct about the frequency of the conservatism of the genre. But there are points at which he seems to imply that the politics are not only typically, but almost uniformly conservative. Yet this appears questionable, especially if I am correct about this universal narrative being character-guided, as there would seem to be nothing preventing a simulation of a hero with more radical ideas and aspirations (just shifting that one simulation parameter, in terms of the theory articulated in How Authors’ Minds Make Stories). Of course, the problem in that case may be that the politically radical character simulation alters the dynamics of the characters’ interactions so profoundly that almost nothing is shared with the narrative that Hobsbawm has identified.

In fact, I believe enough overlap remains for the conservative and radical versions to be recognizable as versions of the same genre. However, the order of events may differ greatly; at least they do so in the case I will consider, very briefly, in the remainder of this essay—Émile Zola’s Germinal. This variability may give further support to the idea that events are guided, not by the narrative trajectory of goal-pursuit and its (temporary or permanent) frustration, but by the contingent interactions of characters.

In any case, Germinal begins with Etienne Lantier, famished and penniless, traveling alone in an unfamiliar land. He has been in effect exiled for “slapping his boss” (“giflant son chef” [2]) at his previous job. He was not at that time defending the honor of a woman, as far as we know. However, he soon is employed in the mines he happens to be passing and quickly develops great affection and a feeling of protectiveness for another worker, Catherine, who is involved with the villain of the novel, Chaval, who beats her brutally and repeatedly humiliates her. At the end of the novel, before Etienne sets out on his second exile, he finally does defend Catherine, though I hesitate to say that he defends her honor, which may suggest a conservative sexual morality. Etienne, rather, defends her autonomy, her right to be treated as an end in herself and not as a mere means (to adopt Kant’s influential formulation). In any event, this motif is shared with Hobsbawm’s versions of the bandit hero narrative, but it does not initiate Etienne’s alienation from the legal authorities. Moreover, it occurs between two exiles—the first, which begins the novel, tragic; the second, which ends the novel, hopeful. Zola makes clear that, in his view, this second exile is prologue to world-changing events; see, for example, the final paragraph of the work.

Of course, events of this optimistic, transformative sort were not entirely missing from the story of Germinal, whose title recalls both the French Revolutionary calendar and the germ or seed that has been planted by the labor struggles that, though in this case defeated, are so powerfully depicted in that story. What is more important is that Etienne becomes the leader of a strike by the miners. This strike sets Etienne against the forces of law and order in his society, as well as the wealthy mine owners and managers. Indeed, the first (the forces of law and order)—most obviously through the gendarmes—oppress the people, while the second exploit them. Thus, Etienne stands up against the same harmful behaviors toward the people as do the bandit heroes. But Etienne’s ideology is not conservative. It is somewhat of a jumble of different strands of socialism and anarchism, but Etienne certainly does envision a radical transformation of society.

Part of Etienne’s vision of this transformation involves the inculcation of what came to be called “revolutionary discipline.” This involved the restraint of spontaneous impulses by a reasoned consideration of effective strategies and/or tactics. We see this during the strike, when the striking miners turn to violence. In keeping with the bandit hero structure, this manifests a popular, spontaneous desire for revenge. (The crowds of strikers periodically make their desire for revenge explicit.) The difference is that, in this case, it is the people who become, in Hobsbawm’s words, “the terror-bringing avenger” (Bandits 23, emphasis in the original), not the bandit hero or the relevantly parallel figure (here, Etienne). This difference also accounts for the difference in the endings of the bandit version proper and the revolutionary version (at least as manifest in Zola’s novel). The bandit versions frequently end with the defeat of the bandit, presumably because this sort of individual rebellion cannot stand up indefinitely to the more numerous and more powerful forces of the state and the wealthy. But in the case of the workers as a group, the numerical dominance is reversed—hence, the optimistic conclusion of the novel, despite the tragedy that kills off most of the sympathetic characters (excepting, of course, the revolutionary leader). One final element links Germinal with the bandit hero genre isolated by Hobsbawm—the loyalty of the people to the ultimate ruler of the society (e.g., the monarch), even when the rest of the administrative hierarchy is dismissed as corrupt, and the remainder of the dominant class as decadent. We see this in the portraits of the Emperor and Empress displayed in the home of the main family of miners in the novel.

In sum, Hobsbawm isolated a plausible and consequential universal. The nature and structure of events in this genre suggest that it is character-guided, in that it appears to derive its events and their organization from the simulation of character dispositions and their likely interactions. This is different from plot-guided stories in which the trajectory of events is a function of possible, simulated complications in the protagonist’s or protagonists’ pursuit of a goal. (The various narrative universals I have examined in my previous work are of the second sort.) Further evidence for this difference derives from the reappearance of most of the same motifs (e.g., protecting a woman’s honor) in at least some stories of revolution. The main difference between the revolutionary version and the bandit hero version—aside from politics–is that these motifs appear in a different order and therefore do not have the same causal structure or narrative role.

Works Cited

Chandler, Billy Jaynes. King of the Mountain: The Life and Death of Giuliano the Bandit. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois UP, 1988. 

Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. New York: The New P, 2000.

Hobsbawm, Eric. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition. Ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983, 1-14.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. How Authors’ Minds Make Stories. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013.

Zola, Émile. Germinal. N.c.: Ebooks Libres et Gratuits, 2003.