BACKGROUND OF MYTH AND ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM

First and foremost, myth in classical Greek is used in referring to any story or plot,

 whether it be true or invented however, myth is a part of mythology and mythology is presented as a system of hereditary stories of ancient origin which were once believed to be true by a cultural group, and intention sand actions of divine and other supernatural beings why the world is as it is and things happen as they do to provide   a rationale for social customs and for rules by which people conduct their lives.

Myth according to Bruce

 W. Young, is closely linked to ritual; myth is “the spoken part of the ritual, the story which the ritual enacts” far from being the false stories, myths (for cultures that accepts them) are the most true of stories, stories about the most crucial and fundamental of realities. Myths are largely stories about origins, including the origin of the cosmos and all that it includes. Thus gives meaning to the world, to human life, and to things in the world by explaining how all these have come into being. (60)

Anthropological researchers have shown that; myths plays an important role in the life of a culture, since myth is not merely a story told” but  a living reality believed to have once happened in primeval times, and continuing even to influence the world and human destinies”….furthermore, myth is “a hard working, extremely important cultural force” intimately concerned with a cultures rituals, morality, “social organization, and practical activities.

Every human culture and civilization is shrouded by a series of myths and mythical tales, which takes very strong positions and exerts influences on the behaviors of those who adhere to such cultural and ideological persuasions. It is very clear to us that every culture has its own mythical account of the creation of the earth and the very first humans to traverse upon the earth.

Scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the western world, excluding the romantics, believed that myths are false stories which projects human characteristics onto the external world. However, this positions have been brought into refutations by modern scholars and critics who  have rejected this previous notions and are therefore, willing to “acknowledge that non-rational elements –myths,  archetypes and symbols plays an important role in endowing Literature with meaning and power. (cowls,61)

Myth criticism according to Keats Apollo is defined as “an interpretative approach to literature which may be used in conjunction with other critical approaches generally to uncover and identify manifestations of mythology in a literary whether as the appropriation of a traditional mythological figure, story or place or in the form of allusion and interpretations of the work. (online @www.sas.upenn.edu)

ORIGIN OF MYTHIC/ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM

The anthropological origins of archetypal criticism is traced back to it’s analytical psychological origins by over 30 years. The golden bough (1890-1915), written by the Scottish anthropologist sir James Frazer, this was the first influential text dealing with cultural mythologies. Frazer was a member of a group of comparative anthropologists working out of Cambridge university who researched veraciously on the thought. The book, “The Golden Bough” was widely accepted as the seminal text on myth that spawned a number of studies on the same subject.

Remarkably, Frazer identified in “the golden bough” the practices and mythological beliefs shared among primitive religions and modern religions. He argues that the death-rebirth myth is present in almost all cultural mythologies, and is acted out in terms of growing seasons and vegetations.

Away from Frazer, is the Swiss-born founder of Analytical psychology Carl Gustave Jung. His works theorizes about myths and archetypes in relation to the unconscious, an inaccessible part of the mind from the perspectives of Jung, myths are the culturally elaborated representations of the contents of the deepest recess of the human psyche; the world of the archetype” (Walker,4).

Beginning from 1919, Carl Jung revived the word archetype which has its etymology in Greek and is used to refer to any model from which copies or reflections, emanations of the archetypes from which any individual ‘chair’ existing in the eternal, non-material realm of focus” 


and used it as part of his theory of “the collective unconscious” Jung was at first a disciple of Freud, but differed in his view of human nature. The non-rational dimension of our being, according to Jung, it is committed to our personal unconscious, with its various neuroses and complexes. The arguments therefore are that, these personal unconscious forms only but a thin layer of our minds. Therefore, 


it is the sub-rational depth from which our conscious minds arise is the “collective unconscious” which is a sphere of the unconscious mythology “that we share with the rest of humanity. (cowles 63-64)

To Jung, an archetype in the collective unconscious, is as quoted from leitch et al...is “irepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas” (988), due to the fact that they are at an inaccessible part of the mind, the  archetypes to which Jung refers are represented through primordial images, a term which he coined, primordial images originates from the initial stages of humanity and have been part of the collective unconscious ever since. 

It is through primordial images that universal archetypes are experienced, and more importantly, the unconscious is revealed. The Jungian archetypes approach treats literary texts as an avenue in which primordial images are represented, this lasted until, the 1950’s when other branch of archetypal criticism developed.(Wikipedia)

The development of myth criticism seems to be a continuum from where other theorists of the same ideological persuasions stopped . frye’s Bodkins 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 Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye that archetypal criticism was theorized in purely literary texts, Frye’s work was a break away from both Frazer and Jung’s positions in a way that sets it apart from its anthropological and psychoanalytical precursors.

 Frye believes that the death-rebirth myth is not ritualistic since it is involuntary, and as such must take place with regards to Jung’s perspectives Frye was not interested in the collective unconscious on the grounds of the feeling that it was unnecessary! since the unconscious is the unknowable it cannot be studied, neither was it concerned with how archetypes came into being. He was rather focused in the function and effects of archetype.

 Frye believes that literary archetypes “play an important role in refashioning the material universe into an alternative verbal universe  that is humanly  intelligible an viable, because it is adapted to essential human needs and concerns”. (Abrams 224-225)

THE TWO CATEGORIES IN FRYE’S FRAMEWORK

Northrop Frye framework was based on the comedic and tragic, and each category is further sub-divided into three categories: comedy and romantic for the comedic: tragedy and satire (or ironic) for the tragic.

 While running his analysis with the seasons in his archetypal schema, each season is aligned with a literary genre: while comedy with spring, romance is with summer, tragedy with autumn, and satire with winter.

This alignment of comedy with spring is due to the fact that, comedy is characterized by the birth of the hero, revival and resurrection of 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 always culminates with some sort of triumph, which is often in marriage.

Autumn is paired with tragedy because it is the dying stage of the seasonal calendar, and since tragedy is known for the fall or demise of the protagonist. While satire 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 , disillusion and the defeat of the heroic figure. In a nutshell, the interpretations of a symbol depends on the genre in which it is being applied

Frye outlined five different spheres in his schema: human, animal, vegetation, mineral and water. The comedic human world is representative of the wish fulfillment and being community centered. While the tragic-presents the human world 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}. (wikipedia)

MEANING AND FUNCTION OF MYTHS AND ARCHETYPES

Although Northrop Frye has ben the most influential myth-archetype critic of the last few decades, however, he is considered not the only one as there are other authorities and scholars of like minds who differ in points of view.

 This is why the practiv=ce of mythic and archetypal criticism has been with a wide variety of ways an dhas been based on many different assumptions. With regards to Archetype, jung considers them to be “universal possibilities of ideas or experiences that we inherit from our ancestors. Why Frye considers them to be literary conventions that is derived from primitive myth and ritual”. 

However, in the original sense of things, Archetypes are the structural principles of the universe or of the human mind. Some critics of the twentieth century, considers archetypes to have a universal meaning and effect because they reflect either the eternal patterns God built into the universe or elements found within the human soul or mind.

    According to Joseph Campbell , the first function of a  mythology  is to awaken in the individual a sense of awe, wonder, and participation in the inseparable mystery of being”. Some other critics, are of the opinion that archetypes and myth occupies more significance based on the relevance and importance given to it by the particular culture than to any innate powers that they possess. Against this background, the view of C.S, Lewis stands out with his argument that first a myth has qualities that distinguishes it from other kinds of stories or language,…myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to, furthermore, he associates myth with certain characteristics. 

(1) myth is extra-literary that is, it has “a value independent of  its embodiment in any literary work.(2)

   Generally Archetypal/mythological criticism argues that archetypes determines the form and function of literary works , that the meanings of  a text 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 tricksters or the hero, symbols such as the apple or snake or images such as crucifixition …all laden with meanings when applied to a literary work. Archetypal images and story patterns encourage readers to participate ritualistically in basic belief, fears, and anxieties of their age.

CRITICISM OF THE THEORY OF MYTHIC/ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM

 It is being 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 is confronted with is with contemporary literature and that of post-modernism in general, 

it is on the grounds that genres and categories are no longer distinctly separate and that the very concept of genre has become blurred thereby faulting Frye’s schema. An example is Beckett’s “waiting for Godot” which is considered a tragic-comedy, a play with elements of tragedy and satire, with the implication that interpreting textual elements in the play becomes difficult as the two genres are pitted against each other. Frye thought that literary forms were part of a great circle and were capable of shading into generic forms. In general myths and archetypes deal with the origin of literary texts. (Wikipedia)

  

EXAMPLES OF ARCHETYPES IN LITERATURE

 Femme fatale: a female character type who brings upon catastrophic and disastrous events . Eve from the story of  genesis or Pandora from Greek mythology.

The journey: a narrative archetype where the protagonist must overcome a series of obstacles before reaching his/her goal. The quintessential journey archetype in western culture is arguably Homer’s Odyssey.

Numbers: numbers have been assigned meanings and some systems of interpretations depends largely on number. However, this varies from one culture to another. In biblically influenced cultures, the numbers three, seven and twelve have special significance ( three is associated with the God head, seven with the days of creation, while twelve is the twelve tribe of Israel and the twelve apostles.)

The sun could be interpreted to mean life, light, reason , God , Christ , male.

Fire: life, warmth, comfort, passion, destruction, suffering, hell.

Snake: evil, the devil, wisdom, sex, savage figure etc. these and many more symbols and interpretations abound.

  

CONCLUSION

I would like to conclude  on the note that mythic/archetypal criticism can show the writer where the imagery is coming from, and as well suggest reasons for its power and  the same time comes in handy in an attempt to give meanings to a text based on the culture or mythology antecedent of such stories.