神话原型批评

Myth and Archetypal Criticism
By Bai Wenyu
Myth and Archetypal Criticism
• Definition: As the verbal expression of ancient dreams and rituals, the myth also the structural principle of imaginative literature when it gives meaning to rituals and form to eams.
the Anatomy of Criticism
• Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, the first work on the subject of archetypal literary criticism, applies Jung’s theories about the collective unconscious, archetypes, and primordial images to literature.
Frye
• Frye proposed, based on the previous two, a whole system of literary archetype criticism in the 1950s
The archetypes of literature
• Frye is best remembered for the Anatomy of Criticism (1957), the work expresses his belief shared by the New Critics and literary psychoanalysts that literary criticism should possess the methodological discipline and coherence of the natural science.
Frye
• Frye’s work breaks from both Frazer and Jung in such a way that it is distinct from its anthropological and psychoanalytical precursors. For Frye, the death-rebirth myth that Frazer sees manifest in agriculture and the harvest is not ritualistic since it is involuntary, and therefore, must be done.
Collective Unconsciousness.
• Definition: The contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes.
The Anima
• The anima is an archetype that is manifest in men. For just as the man is compensated by a feminine element.
The Animus
• The anima is an archetype that is manifest in women. ,so women is compensated by a masculine one.
Three important principal archetypes
According to Rung, the archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and the most disturbing influence on ego. These are shadow, the anima, and the animus.
The Golden Bough
• Frazer’s masterpiece in twelve volumes. Try to show a general development modes of thought from the magical to the religious and, finally, to the scientific, or the trace of human consciousness from the primitive to the civilized.
Development
• Ⅰ.James Frazer • Ⅱ.Jung • Ⅲ.Frye
Ⅰ.James Frazer
• In the late nineteenth century, Frazer revealed the recurring mythical patterns in tales and rituals;
Critiques of Archetypal Criticism
• It has been argued that Frye’s version of archetypal criticism strictly categorizes works based on their genres, which determines how an archetype is to be interpreted in a text. According to this argument the dilemma Frye’s archetypal criticism faces with more contemporary literature, and that of post-modernism in general, is that genres and categories are no longer distinctly separate and that the very concept of genres has become blurred, thus problematizing Frye’s schema. For instance Beckett’s Waiting For Godot is considered a tragicomedy, a play with elements of tragedy and satire, with the implication that interpreting textual elements in the play becomes difficult as the two opposing seasons and conventions that Frye associated with genres are pitted against each other. But in fact arguments about generic blends such as tragicomedy go back to the Renaissance, and Frye always conceived of genres as fluid. Frye thought literary forms were part of a great circle and were capable of shading into other generic forms.
Shadow
• The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effect. • It involves the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.
Jung
• In 1930s and 1940s, Jung developed archetypes, Jung agreed with Frazer that myth was means by which the primitive people experienced the world, but to him myth concerns humanity in general, including modern man, via a concept called collective unconsciousness.
THANK YOU!