LIVING TO DIE OR DYING TO LIVE THE ARCHETYPE OF EARLY DEATH IN HEROIC TRADITIONS

Triangulating the military practices of the pre-modern world, the ideologies of "shame societies" and the symbolic plexuses of universal heroic poetry, this article revisits the crucial theme of early death - sudden violent red -, a moment of revelatory density through which the elite warrior accomplishes himself and shapes the end of his life. Dying before his time on the battlefield is the fighter's way of defeating ordinary mortality by escaping the withering of the flesh once and for all. Seen from this perspective, premature death is one of the performances through which the hero militates against the forces of the pre-formal and undifferentiated chaos.