 | M Zahid Akram |
An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usuallyrisky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports. The term also broadly refers to any enterprise that is potentially fraught with physical, financial or psychological risk, such as a business venture, a love affair, or other major life undertakings.
Adventurous experiences create psychological and physiological arousal, which can be interpreted as negative (e.g. fear) or positive (e.g. flow), and which can be detrimental as stated by the Yerkes-Dodson law. For some people, adventure becomes a major pursuit in and of itself. According to adventurer André Malraux, in his La Condition Humaine (1933), "If a man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?". Similarly, Helen Keller stated that "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
Outdoor adventurous activities are typically undertaken for the purposes of recreation or excitement: examples are adventure racing and adventure tourism. Adventurous activities can also lead to gains in knowledge, such as those undertaken by explorers and pioneers. Adventure education intentionally uses challenging experiences for learning.
Adventure in mythology
The oldest and most widespread stories in the world are stories of adventure. Mythologist Joseph Campbell discussed his notion of the monomyth in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell proposed that the heroic mythological stories from culture to culture followed a similar underlying pattern, starting with the "call to adventure", followed by a hazardous journey, and eventual triumph. The adventure novel exhibits these "protagonist on adventurous journey" characteristics as do many popular feature films, such as Star Wars.
Young adventurers not in search of wealth, but of adventure itself.
Adventurers
An adventurer is a person who bases his lifestyle or their fortunes on adventurous acts. An adventurer or adventuress is a term that usually takes one of three meanings:
- One whose travels are unusual and often exotic, though not so unique as to qualify as exploration.
- One who lives by their wits.
- One who takes part in a risky or speculative course of action for profit or position.
In fiction, the adventurer figure or Picaro may be regarded as a descendant of the knight-errant of Medieval romance. Like the knight, the adventurer roams through episodic encounters, usually involving wealth, romance, or fighting. Unlike the knight, the adventurer was a realistic figure, often lower class or otherwise impoverished, who is forced to make his way to fortune, often by deceit. Also, an adventurer is a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. The picaresque novel originated in Spain in the middle of the fifteenth century. Novels such as Lazarillo de Tormes were influential across Europe. Throughout the eighteenth century, a great number of novels featured bold, amoral, adventuring protagonists, who made their way into wealth and happiness, sometimes with and sometimes without the moral conversion that generally accompanies the Spanish model.
Under Victorian morality the term, used without qualifiers, came to imply a person of low moral character, often someone trying to marry for money.
In comic books such as Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe, the term "adventurer" is used as a synonym for "super-hero" when listing a character's occupation.
In role-playing games, the player characters are often professional adventurers, who earn wealth and fame by adventure, such as undertaking hazardous missions, exploring ruins, and slaying monsters. This stereotype is strong enough that the adventurers can often be used as a synonym for the player characters. Non-player character groups of adventurers can also exist, and can be an interesting encounter for the players.
Historical adventurers
T.E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia.- Roy Chapman Andrews
- Frederick Gustavus Burnaby
- Richard Francis Burton
- Martha Jane "Calamity Jane" Canary-Burke
- Giacomo Casanova
- Percy Fawcett
- Bartholomew Gosnold
- Mata Hari
- James Holman
- F.A. Mitchell-Hedges
- Ibn Battuta
- Jørgen Jørgensen
- T. E. Lawrence
- David Livingstone
- Ranald MacDonald
- John Muir
- Marco Polo
- Arthur Rimbaud
- Teddy Roosevelt
- Ernest Shackleton
- Captain John Smith
- Edward John Trelawny
- Edward Maria Wingfield
- Alexander von Humboldt
- Gustavus von Tempsky
- Zheng He
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