1. What is Archetypal Criticism?
Archetypal criticism is a type of literary criticism examining the presence of archetypal characters within a piece of literature. Such characters can be found in works of fiction, long or short, and in more poetic works. The archetypal character is a simple character template recognizable to all readers. Archetypal criticism is a part of social anthropology and psychoanalysis. The idea of character archetypes is based on the works of psychologist Carl Jung. An archetype is essentially a character prototype. Such prototypes find their ways into all modes of literature and story across generations, cultures and languages. While the idea of such basic characters was developed by Jung in the 20th century, the word itself has been in use in England since the 1540s.Jung was from Switzerland and was the first to reject the then pervasive idea of tabula rasa. Tabula rasa is an idea whereby all babies are born as blank slates. This goes back to the theological discussions of the 4th and 5th centuries about how God gives babies souls and they are born sinful. Jung argued that each baby is instead born with a built-in archetypal template. This template remains only potential until the child grows up.Northrop Frye was a Canadian thinker who built upon Jung’s ideas. He cared less about the how and why of natural-born archetypes and more about their functions and effects. He believed that archetypes and archetypal criticism form an important part of literature. The archetypes allow stories and literature to refresh and reform itself again and again. This means old stories can be told in a new way, but with the archetypes present to give it meaning to people.
2.What does the archetypal critic do?
Archetypal criticism argues that archetypes determine the form and function of literary works, that a text's meaning is shaped by cultural and psychological myths. Archetypes are the unknowable basic forms personified or concretized in recurring images, symbols, or patterns which may include motifs such as the quest or the heavenly ascent, recognizable character types such as the trickster or the hero, symbols such as the apple or snake, or images such as crucifixion all laden with meaning already when employed in a particular work.
Archetypal criticism gets its impetus from psychologist Carl Jung, who postulated that humankind has a "collective unconscious," a kind of universal psyche, which is manifested in dreams and myths and which harbors themes and images that we all inherit. Literature, therefore, imitates not the world but rather the "total dream of humankind." Jung called mythology "the textbook of the archetypes"
3. What is Frye trying prove by giving an analogy of ' Physics to Nature' and 'Criticism to Literature'?
Northrop Frye compares “Physics to Nature” and “Criticism to Literature”. Physics is a systematic study of nature, but a student of Physics will say that he/she is learning Physics not nature. Similarly, Criticism is a systematic study of literature. We cannot learn literature but criticism of literature can be learnt.
4.Share your views of Criticism as an organised body of knowledge. Mention relation of literature with history and philosophy
Criticism is the organized body of knowledge. That through we look at various approaches. Literature have a vital reaction with History and Philosophy. Both of strong pillars of the literature. In between literature grown. Philosophy as important as history or vice versa. In history we find that past events, action and scene. In philosophy we look for morality, ethics and wisdom. Let's see how literature made up, literature is all about ideas and events. Without event we not get any idea and without idea no literature.
5.Briefly explain inductive method with illustration of Shakespeare's Hamlet's Grave Digger's scene.
Inductive method – Example to Rule
Northrop Frye gives example of Gravedigger’s scene from “Hamlet” to explain this method. To study this scene we need to go step by step backwards to study this method:
a.) First, the question of existence can be seen. Every man dies at one point.
b.) Second, image of corruption can be seen.
c.) Third, we see Hamlet’s love for Ophelia.
Hamlet represents Archetypal hero who is ready to die for his love.
This method moves from “Particular to General”.
6.Briefly explain deductive method with reference to an analogy to Music, Painting, rhythm and pattern.Give examples of the outcome of deductive method?
In the Deductive method we see that the Process going on general to particular. If we take reference to an analogy to music then we can say that move in time whether the painting presented space in terms of arts. In both cases organizing principle recurrence. So the reputation is gives us general ideas.
In music Rhythm is temporal and in painting pattern is spatial. In the reading of the book we feel both elements together.
Music has rhythm and Painting have pattern. We might not understand music at once and we might understand painting at first look. Literature is a bridge between music and painting. Words in literature bring the rhythm of music and pictorial image all together. This method moves from “General to Particular”.
7.Refer to the Indian seasonal grid (in the blogpost). If you can, please read small Gujarati or Hindi or English poem from the archetypal approach and apply Indian seasonal grid in the interpretation.?
In school time we have studied seasonal poem in Gujarati,
કેસુડાની કળીએ બેસી ફાગણિયો લહેરાયો...
We studied in BA William Wordsworth's poem 'The Daffodils' and in this poetry Wordsworth gives a definition of poetry.
Also in MA, we studied 'Wordsworth and Coleridge - the study of poets'
John Keat's poetry 'Ode to Autumn' and 'The Human Seasons'.
Literature and Religion: Northrop Frye - ritual, myth and the archetype of literature
The term Myth is beginning a brief study of the opinions and definitions of the theorists and intellectuals of the relevant disciplines like Anthropology, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Literary Criticism. The term myth has multiple dimensions in the philosophical, social, cultural and psychological premises.
Myths are usually considered as fairy tales or beautifully narrated escapes of imagination created by old people for their entertainment or consolation in the face of mysterious natural phenomena. Myths have a profound impact on human lives even as they are formed by, the way human beings live.
Northrop Fry in The Secular Scripture points out that myth is a drive towards a verbal outline of human experience. It is the external presence in the psyche. Many things have been handed down to humanity in a Satanist form in human nature, manifesting itself in man’s dream that enables a person to glimpse the past.
Northrop Frye extract archetypes and essential mythic formula from the genres and individual plot patterns of literature. He tended to emphasize the circumstance of mythical patterns in literature. He assumed that myths are closer to the elemental archetype than the artful manipulations of sophisticated writers. The death or rebirth theme was often said to be the archetype of archetypes and was held to ground in the cycle of the seasons and the organic cycle of human life.
Frye makes the distinction of shifting the notion of the archetype from the psychological to the literary. Frye proposes that concealed symbolic narratives exist across all humankind and all history, and have the potential to influence our lives at an almost invisible level. Thus, he makes myth his most important concept, supporting a new poetics that is the principle of his mythological framework.
As Northop Frye puts, the typical forms of myth become the conventions and genres of literature. Frye presents the following example of a mythic scheme with which to understand art, based upon the cycle of fertility myth. Each season is associated with a literary genre: comedy with spring, romance with summer, tragedy with autumn, and satire with winter. Comedy is associated with spring because the genre of comedy is characterized by the birth of the hero, revival, and resurrection. In addition, spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and darkness.
Romance and summer are connected because summer is the culmination of a life in the seasonal calendar, and the romance genre ends with some sort of triumph, usually marriage. Autumn is the dying stage of the calendar, which parallels the tragedy genre because it is known for the death of the protagonist. Satire is associated with winter because satire is a dark, disillusioned and mocking form and the defeat of the heroic figure. Frye formulated that the totality of literary works constitutes a ‘self-contained literary universe’ which has been created over the ages by the human imagination.
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