The Archetypes of Literature

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, writing this blog as a part of thinking activity which is given by Prof. Dr. Dilipsir Barad during discussion of Archetypal Critism. In this I will discuss questions below. 

The word ‘archetype’ – from the Greek words

‘arche’ meaning ‘beginning’ and ‘typos’ meaning ‘model’

Archetypal criticism :

A critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in narrative, symbols, images, and character types in literary works to find meaning. 

1. What is Archetypal Criticism? What does the archetypal critic do?

What is most distinctive about Northrop Frye’s criticism is its metaphorical relationship to Jungian psychology. Frye was careful to disclaim any belief in a collective unconscious or racial memory, or the dependence of his literary theories upon any such belief. Indeed, Frye reads Jung only as one who has provided “a grammar of literary symbolism,” as a textual critic rather than as a psychologist. Nevertheless, for Frye as for Jung, the power of literature comes out of its evocation of archetypes that have a permanent place in human life: the hero and the virgin, the witch and the magus, the quest and the journey, the open green world of the forest and the walled-off city.(From the original essay of Northop Frye)

To understand this concept let’s see first this psychological term,

The collective unconsciousness

collective unconscious, term introduced by psychiatrist Carl Jung to represent a form of the unconscious (that part of the mind containing memories and impulses of which the individual is not aware) common to mankind as a whole and originating in the inherited structure of the brain.

What is the collective unconscious?

Jung said that the collective unconscious is a layer of our unconscious mind we come into this world containing, that connects each one of to the history of thoughts and behaviours of all of mankind.

Here the surprisingly told that, Archetypes mean that we can have the same thoughts and ideas as other people we have never met even though they come from an entirely different background and culture. We can relate to the different kind of elements by the same interpretations and same emotions even. So, we can say that in this manner the archetypes playing a vital role in the term of collective unconsciousness. In a much easier sense we can say that the existed all and everything seems same to everyone in a particular way or in a same frequency of the interpretations itself.

The archetypal critis study the various kind of literary texts and criticise them by the archetype methodology.

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

Every organized body of knowledge can be learned progressively; and experience shows that there is also something progressive about the learning of literature. Our opening sentence has already got us into a semantic difficulty. Physics is an organized body of knowledge about nature, and a student of it says that he is learning physics, not that he is learning nature. Art, like nature, is the subject of a systematic study, and has to be distinguished from the study itself, which is criticism. It is therefore impossible to “learn literature”: one learns about it in a certain way, but what one learns, transitively, is the criticism of literature. Similarly, the difficulty often felt in “teaching literature” arises from the fact that it cannot be done: the criticism of literature is all that can be directly taught. So while no one expects literature itself to behave like a science, there is surely no reason why criticism, as a systematic and organized study, should not be, at least partly, a science. Not a “pure” or “exact” science, perhaps, but these phrases form part of a nineteenth-century cosmology which is no longer with us. Criticism deals with the arts and may well be something of an art itself, but it does not follow that it must be unsystematic. If it is to be related to the sciences too, it does not follow that it must be deprived of the graces of culture.(From The Original essay of Northop Frye)

Here, He says physics is like criticism.

Science à physics = Nature

Literature àCriticism = Life

The literature is not about to learn or teach processes. But in the field of literature it is the process of criticism and how to read any literary works.

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

All literature produced by the two pillars that is, History and Philosophy. History playing role for ‘events’ and Philosophy for ‘ideas’. In the good literature there should be action and wisdom. Whenever we talks about the literature it is going into many ways like criticism should be done by the many ways. When artists create work of art, they uses the events from the history and they takes theories from the philosophy and afterwards work get the action and wisdom in a proper way or proper shade.

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

Northop Frye has given two kind of methods in archetypes.

1.Inductive
2.Deductive

When we look at Inductive method we can see the chain like:

Observation à Generalization à theory

Inductive method has the term of “Particular to General”. And mainly it can be use in the specific way like it starts with observation and progressively it goes towards theory. Inductive method is able to give more clear view to look at the things and gives more general ideas.

Here we will see the inductive usage in the illustrations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s Grave Digger’s scene. The archetype “Liebestod” is used. The word Liebestod means Love – Death. The protagonist, Hamlet is taking action on risk of own self for his beloved. So, we can say that he is here as the Liebestod hero.

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

As above we have seen the inductive method now we will look at the deductive method. This method is  going little paradoxically with that method. It is going like generalization towards the any particular observation.

And it’s chain is like :

Rhythm à Music = Temporal (time)

Pattern à Painting = Spatial (space)

This method can be used to interpreting any work of art. The rhythm of literature is narrative and the pattern of literature is image of literature. When we listen the music we spend time to interpret it and it leads like general to particular observation. Music and painting, both are going respectively time and space. Furtherly when we go to Frye he says that in the nature it has the cycle which provide synchronization between organism and rhythm.  

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

There are two basic categories in Frye’s framework, i.e., comedic and tragic. Each category is further subdivided into two categories: comedy and romance for the comedic; tragedy and satire (or ironic) for the tragic. Though he is dismissive of Frazer, Frye uses the seasons in his archetypal schema. Each season is aligned with a literary genre: comedy with spring, romance with summer, tragedy with autumn, and satire with winter.

Rain symbols signified renewal, fertility and change. Here the post use the archetype of Monsoon season to express his own emotions. Post has given the tone of reasoning.

THANK YOU !