ARCHETYPAL or MYTH CRITICISM

patterns that transcend time and geography

“Whether we listen with aloof amusement to thedreamlike mumbo jumbo of some red-eyedwitch doctor of the Congo, or read with cultivatedrapture thin translations from the sonnets of themystic Lao-tse; now and again crack the hardnutshell of an argument of Aquinas, or catchsuddenly the shining meaning of a bizarre Eskimofairy tale, it will be always the one, shape-shiftingyet marvelously constant story that we find.” (3)

Joseph CampbellHero With a Thousand Faces

“We all travel, if not in space in time. And since the first strolling teller-of-tales enthralled his audience at the first campfire, we have all loved travelers and travelers’ tales. From Gilgamesh through Odysseus to Bilbo Baggins and Frodo, the epic journey and its hero continue to capture our imagination.”

Rodney StandenThe Changing Face of the Hero

Archetypal critics account for a universality in literature by pointing to recurring patterns and images that appear so deeply embedded in the human mind and culture that they strike a responsive chord in everyone.

Archetypal Criticism

also called Myth Criticismhas roots in anthropological and

psychological studies – Late 19th and early 20th centuries

Sir James Frazer

Cambridge anthropologist examined primitive rituals that indicated

similar patterns of behavior and belief among diverse and widely separated cultures

Frazer...

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1922) - 12 volumes– explanation of motives behind customs

Italian people of the shores of Lake Nemi rule of kingly succession was to pluck the bough

from a sacred tree and then kill the old king in individual combat

– found this custom was similar or connection of other customs in other peoples

Gilbert Murray

“Hamlet and Orestes” in The Classic Tradition in Poetry– found similarities in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

and the Greek Orestes both are sons of kings killed by younger kinsmen

who then marry the dead king’s wife both are driven by supernatural forces to avenge

their father’s death both end not only by slaying the new king but

also by being responsible for their mother’s death

Murray...

explores connection in the mythic patterns underlying the Greek Orestes saga and the Scandinavian Hamlet story.– behind both is the “world-wide ritual story of

what we may call the Golden-Bough Kings” (Murray 228)

pattern identified by Frazer in which life is renewed through the slaying of an old monarch and succession by a new one.

Carl Jung

psychologist student of Freud The Basic Writing of C.G. Jung first gave prominence to the term archetype

Carl Jung

Collective Unconscious– Shared by all humans– an unconscious “which does not derive from

personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn” (Jung 289)

Carl Jung

Archetypes– contents of the collective unconscious – defined as primordial or “universal images

that have existed since the remotest times” (Jung 288)

– formed during the earliest stages of human development

Carl Jung

Although the theory may seem almost mystic, Jung found no other way to account for the appearance of nearly identical images and patterns in the mind of individuals from wholly different cultures and backgrounds.

Jung...

Jung notes instances which suggest that – water is a symbol of the unconscious and the

action of descending to the water is a symbol of the frightening experience of confronting the depths of one’s unconscious.

dreams of Protestant clergymen legends of African tribes

Jung...

Jung’s account of a patient who in 1906 related visions containing odd symbolic configurations.– later he encountered similar symbols in a

Greek papyrus first deciphered in 1910

Jung

Theory of Individuation– A psychological “growing up”– A process of learning of one’s own

individuality A process of self-recognition which is essential to

becoming a well-balanced person– Neuroses are result of person’s failure to

confront and accept archetypal components of the unconscious

Jung…

Inherited components of the psyche– Principles Archetypes

Animus Anima Shadow

ANIMUS

Physical man Represents physical, brute strength of

man and his animal instincts Can be the “masculine” designation of

the female psyche

ANIMA

The “soul image” The spiritual life-force The “living thing in man, that which lives

of itself and causes life…” “…the archetype of life itself” (Jung, Archetypes 26)

Feminine designation in the male psyche Associated with feelings, passions,

instinctive, unconscious aspect of the psyche

SHADOW

The darker side of our unconscious self Inferior, less pleasing aspect of the personality Represents “the dangerous aspect of the

unrecognized dark half of the personality” (Jung, Two Essays 94)

Needs to be suppressed When projected, this archetype becomes

– The villain– The devil

The theory of archetypes would explain not only such instances as these but also the similarity of myths and rituals found by Frazer, for archetypes are universal patterns from which myths derive.

Joseph Campbell

Monomyth pattern

Maud Bodkin

Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934)– among first literary studies in the

Jungian tradition– application of psychological

knowledge to works of literature

Bodkin...

Rime of the Ancient Mariner– rebirth archetype – “night journey under the sea”

going down to the water (into depths of one’s own being) [death] precedes a “rebirth” into greater wisdom and self-knowledge

Jonah - biblical parallel

Northrop Frye

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957) Relies solely upon literature to draw the

archetypal patterns. Calls the theory of collective unconscious

an “unnecessary hypothesis in literary criticism” (Frye 112)

Frye...

Shifts definition of archetype from psychological to the literary

Archetype is “a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognized as an element of one’s literary experience as a whole” (Frye 365)

Frye...

four types of literature (narrative patterns)– mythos

Unifying myth – analogous to seasons of year– to the story of the birth, death, and rebirth of

the mythic hero

Frye...

Mythos of SUMMER: Romance– analogous to the birth and youthful

adventures of the mythic hero– suggests innocence and triumph– narrative of wish-fulfillment with good

character triumphing over bad Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Robin Hood old-fashioned cowboy movies

Frye...

Mythos of AUTUMN: Tragedy– major movement toward the death or defeat

of the hero Oedipus King Lear

Frye...

Mythos of WINTER: Irony or Satire– hero now absent– society is left without effective leadership or

sense of norms/values Swift’s A Modest Proposal

– social norms are turned upside down for artistic purposes

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Kafka Camus

– sense of hopelessness and bondage

Frye...

Mythos of SPRING: Comedy– rebirth of hero– renewal of life in which those elements of

society who would block the hero are overcome

– hero and heroine take their rightful place – order is restored

Shakespearian comedies

Frye...

Every work of literature has its place within this scheme or myth.

Every piece of literature adds to the myth.

Leslie Fiedler

Begins examination with literary works themselves, rather than with universal patterns

Concerned with defining unique cultural patterns within literature– An End to Innocence: Essays on Culture and Politics

(1955)– Love and Death in the American Novel (1962)

Fiedler...

Uses insights of archetypal criticism to isolate patterns within literature of a given culture or author.

An End to Innocence– sees a single, though controversial,

archetype: “the mutual love of a white man and a colored…the

boy’s homoerotic crush, the love of the black…” (Fiedler 146)

Fiedler...

Argues that where in European novels we would expect to find heterosexual passion, we discover same-sex relationship– James Fenimore Cooper

Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook (Leatherstocking novels – The Last of the Mohicans, The Deerslayer, etc.)

– Herman Melville Ishmael and Queequeg (Moby Dick)

– Mark Twain Huck and Jim (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

Fiedler...

American pattern that may be limited historically

Is a pattern that repeats itself Seems widely shared at a level beneath

consciousness Is for Fiedler, “a symbol, persistent,

obsessive, in short, an archetype” (Fiedler 146)

Bodkin, Maud. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, London: Oxford UP, 1934.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces.New York: Pantheon, 1949.

Fiedler, Leslie. An End to Innocence: Essays on Cultureand Politics. Boston: Beacon, 1955.

--------. Love and Death in the American Novel. Cleveland:World, 1962.

Bibliography

Frazer, Sir James George. The Golden Bough: A Study inMagic and Religion. 1922. New York: McMillan, 1940.

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton:Princeton UP, 1957.

Guerin, Wilfred L. et. al. A Handbook of Critical Approachesto Literature. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.

Jung, Carl Gustav. The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung. Ed. Violet Staub De Laszlo. New York: Modern, 1959.

Bibliography

Murray, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition in Poetry. Cambridge:Harvard UP, 1927.

Standen, Rodney. The Changing Face of the Hero. Wheaton, IL:Theosophical Publishing House, 1987.

Bibliography