读书笔记(1)

Archetypal Literary Criticism in the Understanding of

Anglo-American Literature

After reading Northrop Frye’s “The Archetypes of Literature’’, I found is it very useful and stimulating. I regard it “useful”because it provides a general pattern of myths while being “stimulating” by providing a new perspective in the understanding of Anglo-American Literature.

According to Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms, archetypal literary criticism

originated in the early 20th century from the speculations of the British

anthropologist J. G. Frazer in The Golden Bough(1890-1915) ---a

comparative study of mythologies---and from those of the Swiss

psychologist C. G. Jung, who in the 1920s proposed that certain symbols in

dreams and myths were residues of ancestral memory preserved in the

collective unconscious. (Baldick, 16-17)

We can say that Frazer and Jung are pioneers of archetypal literary criticism. However, is it the Canadian critic Northrop Frye who put forward an influential model of literature in his Anatomy of Criticism (1957) that made archetypal criticism theorized in purely literary terms.

Northrop Frye, a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, is considered one of the most influential of the 20th century whose contributions to cultural and social criticism spanned a long career during which he earned widespread recognition and received many honors. The major work of Frye’s to deal with archetypes is Anatomy of Criticism, one of the most important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century in which his essay “The Archetypes of Literature”, a precursor to the book, elaborated the literary structure of the myth cycle:

the five basic modes of the hero’s “power of action”(myth, romance,

high/low mimetic, and irony); the five layers of symbolic meaning (literal,

figurative, formal, mythical, and Biblical); the four mythoi of the archetypes

(comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony) corresponding to the four phases of

nature (spring, summer, autumn, winter), which in turn reveal three

imageries (apocalyptic, demonic, and analogical which may be further

divided into innocence and experience). (Zhu Gang, 131)

This seemingly prescriptive myth cycle shows an easier way for readers to understand literary works, especially the Greek mythology stories, though some exceptions do exist. It is well known that Greek mythology stories and The Holy Bible are called tow sources of western literature. Many literary works are derived or imitated Greek mythologies. Therefore, well-knowing the literary structure of the myth cycle makes it is easy for readers to understand those works. The usefulness of Frye’s myth cycle is very important, though, I won’t talk more but focus on another function of it. What’s more important of Frye’s myth cycle is that it provides a new perspective for readers to understand biblical archetypes in Anglo-American literature, most of which are created by the inspiration aroused by The Holy Bible---one of the main source of western literature.

Maybe, before the theories of Northrop Frye came out, critics on literature have done a great job with a weary back and mind on the literary works. However, it is by no means the end of literature study. Giving a glance to Anglo-American literature, works that have biblical archetypes employed are numerable---no matter dramas, poems or novels. Examples can be taken at random: Shakespeare’ dramas, Milton’s poems, Ernest Hemingway’s and William Faulkner’s novels, etc. ---just naming some household authors’ works. Shakespeare’s four great tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth are all based on the mode “sin-judgment-salvation” which is the main theme in The Holy Bible; Milton’s famous poems Paradise Lost,Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes are all modeled on The Holy Bible---either on the characters or the plots. The Holy Bible also has great impact on Hemingway and