Theory of Archetypes

Here I am with an interesting topic, Archetypes. This blog is a response to the assigned task By Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In simple words, Archetypal literary criticism is a theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in the narrative and symbols, images and character types in a literary work. Let us try to understand in depth. In this blog I Am going to answer the questions which will help you for better understanding.

ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM

I have taken the reference of the essay The Archetypes of Literature by Northrop Frye.

Northrop Frye:

Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Frye was named a national historic person in 2018. Read more about him.

Archetypal criticism peaked in popularity in the 1940s and 1950s, largely due to the work of Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912-1991). Archetypal literary criticism is a type of analytical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths, and archetypes (from the Greek archē, "beginning", and typos, "imprint") in the narrative, symbols, image and character types in literary works.

What is Archetypal Criticism?

In the beginning let us take archetype as a pattern. Reality is complex and to understand reality stories, myths were used. From This story archetypes emerged. Archetypes are perhaps earliest/ ancient patterns. Archetypes are shared across various cultures in different timelines, even to cultures not connected or known.

Carl Jung took analysis in a different direction instead of looking into individual people to understand human behavior. He looked at human imagination and shared experience to explain behavior. Freud gave the unconscious as a storehouse for repressed desire and emotions, Jung believed that it had a second layer. This one is a deeper, more universal shared memory, common to the whole human race. He called this the collective unconscious. Jung uses the Greek work archetype to explain this content. Our psychic archetypes are recurring patterns of images, symbols, themes and stories that help us to make our lives. According to Jung, wisdom, creativity, and good health are present only when we are in harmony with the archetypes and universal symbols in the collective unconscious. We are able to reveal essential archetypes and symbols in dreams and myths. While dreams are personal manifestations of the individual unconscious, myths are societal manifestations of the collective unconscious. Since ancient times people have turned to stories to help them understand and cope with life. Myths are similar over cultures and eras. Myths are dramatic representations of deep instinctual life of humankind.

Northrop Frye proposed the idea that the main appeal of literature was its connection to primitive story formulas. He claimed literature is a kind of displaced mythology that constantly reverts to the same patterns that we see in Ancient myths.

In literature we can often identify archetypal geography like garden of Eden or wasteland, character types, heroes and villains and themes like good vs evil.

What does the archetypal critic do?

An archetypal critic tries to analyze a pattern in symbols, myth, ritual or stories in literary works to identify the specific pattern.

What is Frye trying to prove by giving an analogy of ' Physics to Nature' and 'Criticism to Literature'?

Frye starts his essay with ideas about progressive study of every organized body of knowledge. Using an analogy of Physics to nature he says that Physics, a branch of science, is an organized body of knowledge about nature, a student says he is learning physics not nature.

Similarly, art (literature) like nature is subject of systematic study, where physics is like Criticism.

Many times language students are supposed to write creative works and have fluent speaking of language but this is not what is taught in language or literature class. It is impossible to ‘learn literature’ . What one learns is ‘criticism of literature’. So, literature is an organized body of knowledge and criticism is a systematic studying part of this body.

Criticism as we find it in learned journals and scholarly monographs has every characteristic of a science. Evidence is examined scientifically; previous authorities are used scientifically; fields are investigated scientifically; texts are edited scientifically. Prosody is scientific in structure; so is phonetics; so is philology.

Thus, Physics as literature and nature as Criticism. As the physics students study, read, learn Nature and call it Physics. Similarly, literature students do not ‘learn literature’ they learn to criticize, ‘learn to read’ literature.

Share your views of Criticism as an organized body of knowledge. Mention relation of literature with history and philosophy.

Literature is the central division of Humanities and Criticism turns out to be a subdivision of Literature. So for the systematic understanding of the subject student have to study the conceptual framework of the historian for events and philosophers of the ideas.

Comparing with the study of the science (organized body of knowledge), eg. If a human body is to be understood a student or doctor will look at the body based on their field. A neurologist will study the brain, a cardiologist will study the heart, Pulmonologist will study the respiratory system, etc. Similarly when one reads studies specific literary work a feminist critic will criticize feminist view, a queer theorist will criticize through queer theory, an existentialist will criticize existential point of view, etc. Which shows Criticism/ Literature is also an organized body of knowledge.

On the basic idea literature is majorly stories and we read these stories with various perspectives. How are these stories created? The two pillars for this in history and philosophy. Historical events provide the plot of the story and philosophy provides ideas and wisdom we read in characters. So before reading any literary work framework reading of history and philosophy becomes necessary to understand the setting, meaning, and contemporary time of the work.

Briefly explain the inductive method with illustration of Shakespeare's Hamlet's Grave Digger's scene.

Frye has used inductive and deductive methodology in Archetypal criticism.

In simple language, an inductive method can be defined as ‘particular to general’. It is used to describe reasoning that involves using specific observations, such as observed patterns, to make a general conclusion.

Let us try to understand, by an indicative method, the Archetype ‘LIEBESTOD’ through the Grave Digger scene from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Liebestod is a German word which means love- death. The scene begins with the puns; from puns to soliloquy, images of corruption and decay, psychological relation between digger and price; declaration of Hamlet's love for Ophelia and Hamlet and brother (Laertes)- sister. All this collectively comes to particular archetype liebestod.

Laertes was angry at Hamlet and if He came out he would definitely be murdered but still he comes out in love for Ophelia which his readiness to die for love and which is Leibestod.

Briefly explain deductive methods with reference to an analogy to Music, Painting, rhythm and pattern. Give examples of the outcome of deductive methods.

Frye has used inductive and deductive methodology in Archetypal criticism.

In simple words, the deductive method is ‘from general to particular’. It is a method of reasoning by which concrete applications or consequences are deduced from general principles or theorems are deduced from definitions and postulates.

Art like music moves with time; we require time to understand, listen and feel to music. And art like painting is like space; hundreds of years on earth is like seconds in space. Looking and enjoying painting requires no time, it can be enjoyed in a blink. Music (time) and painting (space) both recur in rhythm (when it is temporal) and pattern (when it is spatial) respectively. In this we come to the general deduction that literature is intermediate between music and painting. Its words form rhythms which approach a musical sequence of sounds at one of its boundaries, and from patterns which approach the hieroglyphic or pictorial image at the other.

Refer to the Indian seasonal grid . If you can, please read a small Gujarati or Hindi or English poem from the archetypal approach and apply Indian seasonal grid in the interpretation.

In this poem a poet is calling her beloved to come as ‘vasant’ season which is beginning of summer a season of romance according to mythos grid.

These lines indicate the winter season, ‘gile khato’ indicates sadness of the writer. So here winter season can be read as irony.

I Hope this blog was helpful to you. Thanks for visiting.