ARCHETYPAL or MYTH CRITICISM

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ARCHETYPAL or MYTH CRITICISM

• patterns that transcend time and geography

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Whether we listen with aloof amusement to
the dreamlike mumbo jumbo of some red-eyed witch
doctor of the Congo, or read with
cultivated rapture thin translations from the
sonnets of the mystic Lao-tse now and again
crack the hard nutshell of an argument of
Aquinas, or catch suddenly the shining meaning of
a bizarre Eskimo fairy tale, it will be always
the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant
story that we find. (3) Joseph
Campbell Hero With a Thousand Faces
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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 Standen The Changing Face of the
Hero
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• 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.

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Archetypal Criticism

• also called Myth Criticism
• has roots in anthropological and psychological
  studies
• Late 19th and early 20th centuries

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Sir James Frazer

• Cambridge anthropologist
• examined primitive rituals that indicated similar
  patterns of behavior and belief among diverse and
  widely separated cultures

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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

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Gilbert Murray

• Hamlet and Orestes in The Classic Tradition in
  Poetry
• found similarities in Shakespeares Hamlet and
  the Greek Orestes
• both are sons of kings killed by younger kinsmen
  who then marry the dead kings wife
• both are driven by supernatural forces to avenge
  their fathers death
• both end not only by slaying the new king but
  also by being responsible for their mothers death

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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.

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Carl Jung

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

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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)

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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

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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.

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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 ones unconscious.
• dreams of Protestant clergymen
• legends of African tribes

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Jung...

• Jungs 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

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Jung

• Theory of Individuation
• A psychological growing up
• A process of learning of ones own individuality
• A process of self-recognition which is essential
  to becoming a well-balanced person
• Neuroses are result of persons failure to
  confront and accept archetypal components of the
  unconscious

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Jung

• Inherited components of the psyche
• Principles Archetypes
• Animus
• Anima
• Shadow

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ANIMUS

• Physical man
• Represents physical, brute strength of man and
  his animal instincts
• Can be the masculine designation of the female
  psyche

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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

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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

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• 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.

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Joseph Campbell

• Monomyth pattern

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Maud Bodkin

• Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934)
• among first literary studies in the Jungian
  tradition
• application of psychological knowledge to works
  of literature

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Bodkin...

• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• rebirth archetype
• night journey under the sea
• going down to the water (into depths of ones own
  being) death precedes a rebirth into greater
  wisdom and self-knowledge
• Jonah - biblical parallel

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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)

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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 ones literary
  experience as a whole (Frye 365)

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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

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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

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Frye...

• Mythos of AUTUMN Tragedy
• major movement toward the death or defeat of the
  hero
• Oedipus
• King Lear

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Frye...

• Mythos of WINTER Irony or Satire
• hero now absent
• society is left without effective leadership or
  sense of norms/values
• Swifts A Modest Proposal
• social norms are turned upside down for artistic
  purposes
• Conrads Heart of Darkness
• Kafka
• Camus
• sense of hopelessness and bondage

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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

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Frye...

• Every work of literature has its place within
  this scheme or myth.
• Every piece of literature adds to the myth.

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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)

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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 coloredthe
  boys homoerotic crush, the love of the black
  (Fiedler 146)

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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)

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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)

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Bibliography
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 Culture and Politics.
Boston Beacon, 1955. --------. Love and Death
in the American Novel. Cleveland World, 1962.
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Bibliography
Frazer, Sir James George. The Golden Bough A
Study in Magic 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 Approaches to 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.
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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.