Archetypal
Criticism
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 (as in King Kong, or Bride of Frankenstein)--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"
Archetypal
critics find New Criticism too atomistic in ignoring intertextual elements and
in approaching the text as if it existed in a vacuum. After all, we recognize
story patterns and symbolic associations at least from other texts we have
read, if not innately; we know how to form assumptions and expectations from
encounters with black hats, springtime settings, evil stepmothers, and so
forth. So surely meaning cannot exist solely on the page of a work, nor can
that work be treated as an independent entity.
Archetypal
images and story patterns encourage readers (and viewers of films and
advertisements) to participate ritualistically in basic beliefs, fears, and
anxieties of their age. These archetypal features not only constitute the
intelligibility of the text but also tap into a level of desires and anxieties
of humankind.
Archetypes and Archetypal Criticism
The popular saying “when they made you, they threw away the mold” hints that literally the statue or figuratively the person is singular, exceptional, unique. With no mold or pattern to follow, a duplicate is impossible. An archetype, however, is the mold that has not been discarded. The archetypal mold, flexible and long-lasting, provides many close copies of the original. Consider possibly the most popular archetype of all—the Hero. John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones are strikingly different actors, but as heroes who overcome the obstacles in their respective paths, they are undoubtedly from the same mold, an obviously flexible one given the girth of Wayne. The hero archetype appears in every culture; it’s a favorite mold of humanity.
An archetype then is a pattern or prototype of character types, images, descriptive details, and plot patterns that find their way from our minds to our myths to our literature to our lives (Holman 34). The psychologist Carl Jung, a colleague of Sigmund Freud, first popularized the use of the term archetype (pronounced ark-uh-type) when he postulated the theory that, similar to the instincts of animals, humans are born with a “collective unconscious,” a level below the conscious and subconscious, wherein the source of the archetypes or the molds exist. He believed it was this collective unconscious that gave humans certain predispositions to specific stimuli. In other words, we all respond to archetypes in the same way because our minds are made the same way and “preprogrammed” by thousands of years of human experience. Some texts refer to this idea as a “racial memory,” as in human race. A fair analogy might be the mind reacts to an archetype in the same way that the body reacts when a doctor taps the knee with a hammer—reflexively and predictably. As a product of our collective unconscious, archetypes naturally found their way into our subconscious and our dreams. Jung believed he could analyze his patients by focusing on the archetypal elements of their dreams. From dreams archetypes migrated to myths, the stories we told to explain our world before science arrived to help, the stories that reveal our “deepest instinctual life,” the stories that reveal to us our inner selves (Guerin 159). Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, believed that there was really just one universal hero story. Anthropologists like James Frazer have reinforced the universality of archetypes by finding that peoples who could never have encountered each other have the same archetypes in their myths and rituals. From mythology archetypes made the short hop into literature. From our minds to our myths to our literature is a natural progression that shows us that the study of literature is the study of ourselves, archetypes included.
So what the heck does one do with archetypes? Take note of them and use them to explain the story and its appeal to the reader. Patterns that frequent literature and have universal appeal bear watching because they help explain both story and humanity. Use the archetypal hammer to tap your brain’s knee and watch the results. They should help you see what the author intended on many levels. You may have never noticed these before on a conscious level, but by viewing this table you’ll see just how familiar they are. Archetypal literary criticism can also augment other types of literary criticism.
Three sources were compiled for
these tables: www.unm.edu/~abqteach/fairytales/02-03-08.htm,
www.fccps.k12.va.us/gm/faculty/archcrit.htm, and the source below.
The Hero
The protagonist on a literal or figurative journey often from childhood to adulthood, innocence to experience.
Death
The antagonist or character blocking the hero’s path.
Shadow
The hero’s inner evil, the dark side of his psyche that makes success difficult or impossible unless accepted.
Mother and Father
Yup, the parental units are near and dear to our hearts and especially our minds because of their nurturing or lack thereof.
The Wise Old Man
A mentor, a teacher, a counselor
The Friendly Beast
This shows that nature is pro-hero.
The Devil
The bad, bad person who tempts the hero
The Scapegoat
A person (or animal) whose death relieves others of a sin or wrong
The Outcast
A character banished because of his wrong doing; often a wanderer
The Earth Mother
A female character, naturally, who offers spiritual and emotional comfort
The Temptress or Terrible Mother
A female who tempts the hero and tries to bring about his end. Synonyms include femme fatale, witch, sorceress, and siren because these suggest the magical powers of a seductive woman.
The Platonic or Perfect Woman
The hero has primarily an intellectual love for this woman who inspires his best.
The Unfaithful Wife
Cheater, cheater.
The Damsel in Distress
Help me! Help me, please!
Star-crossed Lovers
Lovers fated to suffer a tragic end.
The Trickster
This character has a negative nature, a character that might be a fraud, a prankster, a con man, a joker, etc. However, they might be helpful to the hero at some point.
And Many More…
This list is by no means an exhaustive one.
The Hero
The protagonist on a literal or figurative journey often from childhood to adulthood, innocence to experience.
Death
The antagonist or character blocking the hero’s path.
Shadow
The hero’s inner evil, the dark side of his psyche that makes success difficult or impossible unless accepted.
Mother and Father
Yup, the parental units are near and dear to our hearts and especially our minds because of their nurturing or lack thereof.
The Wise Old Man
A mentor, a teacher, a counselor
The Friendly Beast
This shows that nature is pro-hero.
The Devil
The bad, bad person who tempts the hero
The Scapegoat
A person (or animal) whose death relieves others of a sin or wrong
The Outcast
A character banished because of his wrong doing; often a wanderer
The Earth Mother
A female character, naturally, who offers spiritual and emotional comfort
The Temptress or Terrible Mother
A female who tempts the hero and tries to bring about his end. Synonyms include femme fatale, witch, sorceress, and siren because these suggest the magical powers of a seductive woman.
The Platonic or Perfect Woman
The hero has primarily an intellectual love for this woman who inspires his best.
The Unfaithful Wife
Cheater, cheater.
The Damsel in Distress
Help me! Help me, please!
Star-crossed Lovers
Lovers fated to suffer a tragic end.
The Trickster
This character has a negative nature, a character that might be a fraud, a prankster, a con man, a joker, etc. However, they might be helpful to the hero at some point.
And Many More…
This list is by no means an exhaustive one.
The Quest
The search for someone or something that will restore rightness to the hero’s world that involves hardships, monsters, or riddles.
The Task
The hero must perform a deed beyond the norm.
The Initiation or Transformation
The hero undergoes a hazing to pass from ignorance and immaturity to social and spiritual adulthood. It usually occurs in three stage: separation, transformation, and return and thusly may include the fall and death/rebirth
The Journey
In search of information, the hero passes into a real or figurative hell from which he may emerge after he discovers the blackest truths of himself
The Fall
The hero falls to a lower level from a comparative heaven after a loss of innocence and happiness because of a transgression, a wrong.
Death and Rebirth
Usually a metaphorical death, a spiritual or emotional death and reviving of the spirit and emotions
Nature vs. the Mechanical World
Nature good, machines bad.
The Unhealable Wound
A physical or psychological wound that indicates a loss of innocence
The Ritual
Weddings, baptisms, coronations—real or figurative—that mark a rite of passage to another state or level
The Magic Weapon
The Hero’s weapon that no one else can use to its full potential if at all.
Garden
Paradise, innocence, unspoiled beauty, fertility
Tree
Life of the cosmos, immortality
Desert
Spiritual aridity, death, nihilism, hopelessness
Archetypal Images
The search for someone or something that will restore rightness to the hero’s world that involves hardships, monsters, or riddles.
The Task
The hero must perform a deed beyond the norm.
The Initiation or Transformation
The hero undergoes a hazing to pass from ignorance and immaturity to social and spiritual adulthood. It usually occurs in three stage: separation, transformation, and return and thusly may include the fall and death/rebirth
The Journey
In search of information, the hero passes into a real or figurative hell from which he may emerge after he discovers the blackest truths of himself
The Fall
The hero falls to a lower level from a comparative heaven after a loss of innocence and happiness because of a transgression, a wrong.
Death and Rebirth
Usually a metaphorical death, a spiritual or emotional death and reviving of the spirit and emotions
Nature vs. the Mechanical World
Nature good, machines bad.
The Unhealable Wound
A physical or psychological wound that indicates a loss of innocence
The Ritual
Weddings, baptisms, coronations—real or figurative—that mark a rite of passage to another state or level
The Magic Weapon
The Hero’s weapon that no one else can use to its full potential if at all.
Garden
Paradise, innocence, unspoiled beauty, fertility
Tree
Life of the cosmos, immortality
Desert
Spiritual aridity, death, nihilism, hopelessness
Archetypal Images
Archetypal images are often just
labeled as examples of symbolism, but they are able to symbolize because of
their archetypal origin. The only source for this table of archetypes is A
Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (Guerin 161-166).
Water
Water has archetypal possibilities in every form it takes. It can represent purification, redemption, birth-death-resurrection, sadness, etc.
The Sea
The mother of all life, spiritual mystery and infinity, death and rebirth, timelessness, eternity, and often the unconscious mind
Rivers
Death/rebirth, the flowing of time, the life cycle, gods
Sun
Creative energy, natural law, the conscious mind, the father principle; the rising sun is birth, creation, and enlightenment while the setting sun is death.
Colors
Red: blood, sacrifice, violent passion: disorder
Green: growth, sensation, hope, fertility or negatively death/decay
Blue: truth, religious feeling security, purity
Black: chaos, mystery, the unknown, death, evil, melancholy (sadness), primal wisdom
White: light, purity, innocence, timelessness or death, terror, the supernatural or blinding truth
Circle
A mandala, figure that represents the desire for spiritual unity and integration
The Egg
The mystery of life
Yang-yin
That funky Chinese symbol for a union of opposites: male-female, light-dark, activity-passivity, conscious-unconscious
Serpent
Symbol of energy, pure force, evil, corruption, sensuality, destruction, mystery, wisdom, the unconscious
Numbers
Three: light, spiritual awareness, and unity, the male principle
Four: associated with the circle, the life cycle (seasons) earth, nature (four elements)
Seven: the sum of three and four, the completion of a cycle, perfect order
Water
Water has archetypal possibilities in every form it takes. It can represent purification, redemption, birth-death-resurrection, sadness, etc.
The Sea
The mother of all life, spiritual mystery and infinity, death and rebirth, timelessness, eternity, and often the unconscious mind
Rivers
Death/rebirth, the flowing of time, the life cycle, gods
Sun
Creative energy, natural law, the conscious mind, the father principle; the rising sun is birth, creation, and enlightenment while the setting sun is death.
Colors
Red: blood, sacrifice, violent passion: disorder
Green: growth, sensation, hope, fertility or negatively death/decay
Blue: truth, religious feeling security, purity
Black: chaos, mystery, the unknown, death, evil, melancholy (sadness), primal wisdom
White: light, purity, innocence, timelessness or death, terror, the supernatural or blinding truth
Circle
A mandala, figure that represents the desire for spiritual unity and integration
The Egg
The mystery of life
Yang-yin
That funky Chinese symbol for a union of opposites: male-female, light-dark, activity-passivity, conscious-unconscious
Serpent
Symbol of energy, pure force, evil, corruption, sensuality, destruction, mystery, wisdom, the unconscious
Numbers
Three: light, spiritual awareness, and unity, the male principle
Four: associated with the circle, the life cycle (seasons) earth, nature (four elements)
Seven: the sum of three and four, the completion of a cycle, perfect order
These
survive, according to Frye, “because they are fundamental structures of the
human imagination, perennially useful ways of perceiving the world we
experience.”
Romance
A world where goals are achieved and dreams fulfilled.
Irony
Goals are thwarted and nightmares become reality
Tragedy
Moving from a desirable state to an undesirable one
Comedy
From an undesirable state to a desirable one
Literature uses all these archetypes, but usually in camouflaged ways. No literal magic weapon or damsel in a tower waiting for aid or garden appears in most stories, but figuratively they do. A magic weapon can simply be a character’s education or skills; the damsel can be a woman with a flat tire on the roadside; the garden can be any peaceful, natural place like a park or a character’s dream world. A journey can be a spiritual journey. When the archetypes are used literally, the stories can become more mythological and dated but no less enjoyable. Consider The Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars trilogies.
Romance
A world where goals are achieved and dreams fulfilled.
Irony
Goals are thwarted and nightmares become reality
Tragedy
Moving from a desirable state to an undesirable one
Comedy
From an undesirable state to a desirable one
Literature uses all these archetypes, but usually in camouflaged ways. No literal magic weapon or damsel in a tower waiting for aid or garden appears in most stories, but figuratively they do. A magic weapon can simply be a character’s education or skills; the damsel can be a woman with a flat tire on the roadside; the garden can be any peaceful, natural place like a park or a character’s dream world. A journey can be a spiritual journey. When the archetypes are used literally, the stories can become more mythological and dated but no less enjoyable. Consider The Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars trilogies.
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