Paper - 7 Literary theory and criticism westorn - 2

What is Archetypal criticism? Northrop Frye’s contribution to the archetypal criticism.

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Name: Mital M. Raval

Roll No: 19

M.A. SEM: 2

Batch Year: 2016 – 2018

Email id: ravalmital5292@gmail.com

Enrollment No: 2069108420170026

Paper Name: Literary theory and criticism - 2

Assignment Topic: Oliver Twist as a critique of child labor

Submitted to:  Dr. Dilip Barad

                        Smt. S. B. Gardi

                        Department of English

                        M .k. Bhavnagar University

Introduction:

                           

Northrop Fry was born in Canada in 1921 and studied at Toronto University and Merton College, Oxford University. Initially he was a student of Theology and then he switched over to literature defined an archetype as a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one’s literary experience as a whole. He published his first book, ‘Fearful Symmetry: A study of William Blake’ in 1947. The book is a highly original study of the poetry of Blake and it is considered a classic critical work. Northrop Frye rose to international prominence with the publication of ‘Anatomy of Criticism’ in 1957 and it firmly established him as one of the most brilliant, original and influential of modern critics. Frye died in 1991. On the whole, he wrote about twenty books on western literature, culture, myth, archetypal theory, religion and social thought. ‘The Fables of Identity: Studies in poetic Mythology’ is a critical work published in 1963.

What is Archetypal criticism?

Archetypal literary criticism is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring Myths and archetypes in the narrative, symbols, images, and character types in literary work. In the literary criticism the term archetype denotes recurrent narrative design, patterns of action, character-types, theme, and images which are identifiable in a wide verity of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even social ritual. The Archetype was the treatment of myth by a group of comparative anthropologist at Cambridge University.  The term “Archetypal means, a literary device, an archetype is a reoccurring symbol or universal pattern of human literature. It can also refer to the original model on which all othe things of the same kind are based. According to Carl Jung archetype means collective unconscious”. The archetypal critic observes the symbols, myths and pattern of action and applies it in literary work.
 

Northrop Frye’s contribution to the archetypal criticism.

           Archetypal criticism essay is divided in to three parts, those are…

(1) The concept of Archetypal criticism 

 (2) The Inductive method of analysis Structural Criticism and Inductive analysis

(3) Deductive method of analysis Rhythm and Pattern in literature.

 

        Bodkin’s 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. It was not until the work of the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye that archetypal criticism was theorized in purely literary terms. The major work of Frye’s to deal with archetypes is Anatomy of Criticism but his essay The Archetypes of Literature is a precursor to the book. Frye’s thesis in “The Archetypes of Literature” remains largely unchanged in Anatomy of Criticism. Frye’s work helped displace New Criticism as the major mode of analyzing literary texts, before giving way to structuralism and semiotics.

Mythos Grid:


Frye gives archetypal mythos. This Mythos grid is affect literature so much. Any literature was come out from this mythos grid.

                     Mythos Grid

 

This seasonal round is most important to understand literature because literature is seasonal. 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. 

• Comedy is aligned with spring because the genre of comedy is characterized by the birth of the hero, revival and resurrection. Also, spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and darkness. 

• Romance and summer are paired together because summer is the culmination of life in the seasonal calendar, and the romance genre culminates with some sort of triumph, usually a marriage.

• Autumn is the dying stage of the seasonal calendar, which parallels the tragedy genre because it is, (above all), known for the “fall” or demise of the protagonist.

• Satire is metonymized with winter on the grounds that satire is a “dark” genre. Satire is a disillusioned and mocking form of the three other genres. It is noted for its darkness, dissolution, the return of chaos, and the defeat of the heroic figure. 

  

Of this stage Northrop Frye goes deeper and gives five different spheres in his schema. This five element is very important in literature.

(1) Human

(2) Animal

(3) Vegetation

(4) Mineral

(5) Water

• The comedic human world is representative of wish-fulfillment and being community centered. In contrast, the tragic human world is of isolation, tyranny, and the fallen hero. 

• Animals in the comedic genres are docile and pastoral (e.g. sheep), while animals are predatory and hunters in the tragic (e.g. wolves). 

• For the realm of vegetation, the comedic is, again, pastoral but also represented by gardens, parks, roses and lotuses. As for the tragic, vegetation is of a wild forest, or as being barren. For example, ‘Aakhari Rassta’ Movie. In which graveyard scene is example of vegetation.

• Cities, temples, or precious stones represent the comedic mineral realm. The tragic mineral realm is noted for being a desert, ruins, or “of sinister geometrical images” (Frye 1456). 

• Lastly, the water realm is represented by rivers in the comedic. With the tragic, the seas, and especially floods, signify the water sphere. For example,
             In Satyam shivam sundaram movie we see water realm.

                             

Part-1: The concept of Archetypal criticism

Literature can be interpreted in as many ways as possible, and there are different approaches to literature, and one among them is the archetypal approach. The term “archetype” means an original idea or pattern of something of which others are copies. Archetypal approach is the interpretation of a text in the light of cultural patterns involved in it, and these cultural patterns are based on the myths and rituals of a race or nation or social group. Myths and rituals are explored in a text for discovery of meaning and message.  James George Frazer and Carl Gustav Jung are the two great authorities who, have greatly contributed to the development of archetypal approach. The “collective consciousness” is a major theory of Jung. According to Jung, civilized man “unconsciously” preserves the ideas, concepts and values of life cherished by his distant forefathers, and such ideas are expressed in a society’s or race’s myths and rituals. Creative writers have used myths in their works and critics analyze texts for a discovery of “mythological patterns.” 
 

Two Types of Criticism and the Humanities

Like science, literary criticism is also a systematized and organized body of knowledge. Science dissects and analyses nature and facts. Similarly literary criticism analyses and interprets literature. Frye further says that literacy criticism and its theories and techniques can be taught, but literature cannot be taught, rather it is to be felt and enjoyed. Indeed, literary criticism is like science and it can be creative. There are two types of literary criticism: a significant and meaningful criticism, and a meaningless criticism. A meaningless criticism will not help a reader in developing a systematic structure of knowledge about a work of literature. This kind of criticism will give only the background information about a work. A meaningless criticism will distract the reader from literature. Literature is a part of humanities and humanities include philosophy and history also. These two branches of knowledge provide a kind of pattern for understanding literature. Philosophy and history are two major tools- for interpretation of literature and archetypal criticism is based on philosophy and history of a people. Archetypal criticism is meaningful criticism.
 

Formalistic Criticism & Historical Criticism

There are different types of criticism and most of them remain commentaries on texts. There is a type of criticism, which focuses only on an analysis of a text. Such a criticism confines itself to the text and does not give any other background information about the text. This type of formalistic or structural criticism will help the readers in understanding a text only to some extent. That is, a reader may understand the pattern of a text, but how the pattern is evolved, he cannot understand without the background information, which may be called historical criticism. Structural criticism will help a reader in understanding the pattern of a text and historical criticism will make the reader’s understanding clearer. What the readers require today is a synthesis of structural criticism and historical criticism. Archetypal criticism is a synthesis of structural criticism and historical criticism.

Literary Criticism is a Science

Science explores nature and different branches of science explore different aspects of nature. Physics is a branch of science, which explores matter and natural forces of the universe. Physics and Astronomy gained their scientific significance and they were accepted as branches of science during the Renaissance. Chemistry gained the status of science in the eighteenth century, and so did Biology in the nineteenth century. Social Sciences assumed their significance as part of science in the twentieth century. Similarly, literary criticism, today, has become systematic in its analysis.

Part-2: The Inductive Method of analysis structural criticism and Inductive analysis.

Towards the close of the first section, Frye contends that structural criticism will help a reader in understanding a text, and in his analysis, he proceeds inductively. That is, from particular truths in a work, he draws forth general truths. Owing to jealousy, Othello, in the Shakespearean play, inflicts upon himself affliction and this is the particular truth of the drama from which the reader learns the general truth of life that jealousy is always destructive. This is called the inductive method of analysis under structural criticism, and Frye discusses this in detail in this section of the essay. An author cannot intrude into his text and express his personal emotions and comments. He should maintain absolute objectivity. A critic studies a work and finds out whether an author is free from textual interference. This is a sort of psychological approach also, and this method of criticism helps the reader in understanding an author’s personal symbols, images and myths which he incorporates in his works. At times the author himself may be unconscious of the myths, symbols etc., which he has exploited in his works, and the critic “discovers” such things.

Historical Criticism and Inductive Analysis

Under the second type of criticism called historical criticism, a critic interprets the birth of a text and resolves that it is an outcome of the social and cultural demands of a society in a particular period. The social and cultural milieus are the causes responsible for the creation of a work. Quite evidently the historical-critic plays a major role in the understanding of a text. In fact, both structural criticism and historical criticism are a necessity in archetypal criticism and neither can be dispensed with. But either of them alone does not explain a work completely. A historical critic discovers common symbols and images being used by different writers in their works, and resolves that there must be a common ‘source from which writers have derived their symbols, images and myths. The sea is a common symbol used by many writers over the years and therefore it is an archetypal symbol.

The Collective Unconscious or Racial Memory

Archetypal criticism dissects and analyses symbols, images and mythologies used by a writer in his works, and these symbols, myths and rituals have their origin in primitive myths, rituals, folk-lore and cultures. Such primitive factors according to Jung lie buried in the “collective unconscious” which may otherwise be called “racial memory” of a people. Since a writer is part of a race, what lies in his “unconscious” mind is expressed in his works in the form, of myths, rituals, symbols and images. Archetypal criticism focuses on such things in a work. In archetypal criticism, under the reductive method of analysis, a critic, while elucidating a text, moves from the particular truth to the general truth.
 

Archetypal Criticism and Its Facets

Archetypal criticism is an all-inclusive term. It involves the efforts of many specialists, and at every stage of interpretation of a text, it is based “on a certain kind of scholarly organization.” An editor is needed to “clean up” the text; a rhetorician analyses the narrative pace; a philologist scrutinizes the choice and significance of words; a literary social historian studies the evolution of myths and rituals. Under archetypal criticism the efforts of all these specialists converge on the analysis of a text. The contribution of a literary anthropologist to archetypal criticism is no small. In an archetypal study of Hamlet an anthropologist traces the sources of the drama to the Hamlet legend described by Saxon, a thirteenth century Danish historian in his book entitled Danes, Gesta Danorum. He further traces the sources of the drama to nature myths, which were in vogue in the Norman Conquest period.

Part - 3

Deductive Method of analysis Rhythm and Pattern in Literature

An archetypal critic, under the deductive method of analysis, proceeds to establish the meaning of a work from the general truth to the particular truth. Literature is like music and painting. Rhythm is an essential characteristic of music and in painting, pattern is the chief virtue. Rhythm in music is temporal and pattern in painting is spatial. In literature both rhythm and pattern are recurrence of images, forms and words. In literature rhythm means the narrative and the narrative presents all the events and episodes as a sequence and hastens action. Pattern in literature signifies its verbal structure and conveys a meaning. In producing the intended artistic effect, a work of literature should have both rhythm (narrative) and pattern (meaning).
 

Rhythm in a Work

The world of nature is governed by rhythm and it has got a natural cycle. The seasonal rhythms in a solar year are spring, winter, autumn and summer. This kind of rhythm is there in the world of animals and in the human world also. The mating of animals and birds rhythmically takes place in a particular season every year and the mating may be called a ritual. A ritual is not performed frequently, but rhythmically after a long gap and it has a meaning. The mating of animals has the meaning of reproduction. In the world of nature also rituals are rhythmic. Crops are planted and harvested rhythmically every year and they have their seasons. At the time of planting and harvest, sacrifices and offerings are made and they have a meaning.  He explains the rhythm of the rituals, which are the basis of literature in general.

Pattern in a Work

It has already been established that in literature pattern is recurrence of images, forms and words. Patterns are derived from a writer’s “epiphany moments.” That is, a writer gets the concepts of his work or ideas of his work in moments of inspiration and he looks into the heart of things. Then he expresses what he has “perceived” in the form of proverbs, riddles, commandments and etiological folktale.

Conclusion:

            Northrop Frye has established the validity of the archetypal approach and its relevance in the elucidation of a text. Like works of literature, criticism is also creative and an archetypal critic discovers the meaning of a text and the motives of a character. No human endeavor is independent and the work of an archetypal critic is inclusive of formalistic criticism (or structural criticism) and historical criticism.

Work sited:

Wikieducator.org/Northrop-Frye-arch….

En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetypal_literature