Northrop Frye's views on archetypal criticism

 Topic: Northrop Frye’s views on his essay Archetype of Literature

Name: Ranjan P. Velari

Sem.: M.A. 2

Paper No.: 7 (Literary Theory & Criticism)

PG Enrollment No.: 14101032

Email ID: ranjanvelari@gmail.com

Year: 2014-15

Guidence: Dr. Dilip Barad

Submitted To: S.B. Gardi

                          Department of English

                          M.K. Bhavnagar University

v “In literary criticism the term archetype denotes recurrent narratives designs, pattern of action, character-types, themes, and images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature.” Elucidate with Northrop Frye’s views in his essay Archetype of literature.

Introduction:

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.

In literary criticism the term archetype denotes recurrent narrative designs, patterns of action, character-types, themes and images, so let’s have a look on these terms.

·       Narrative design: A narrative designer is a role in contemporary video game development, the focus of which is to design the narrative elements of a game. The narrative designer in interactive differs in that it is an active process to create story via a users navigation of a dataspace.

·       Patterns of action: This term is sometimes used in ethology to denote an instinctive behavioral sequence that is relatively invariant within the species and almost inevitably runs to completion. More detailed analysis of behavioral sequences since the term was first coined has meant the term is now largely replaced by phrases such as "behavior patterns" or "behavioral acts".

·       Character-types: A character is a person in a narrative work of arts. A character that stands as representative of a particular class or group of people is known as a type. Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualized. 

·       Themes: A theme is the central idea or ideas explored by a literary work.

A work of literature may have more than one theme. Hamlet, for instance, deals with the themes of death, revenge, and action, to name a few. King Lear's themes include justice, reconciliation, madness, and betrayal.

·       Images: A representation of the external form of a person or thing in art.

What is Archetypal criticism? What are the sources of its origin?

·       In literary criticism the term archetype denotes recurrent narratives designs, patterns of action, character-types, themes, and images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even social rituals.

·       Such recurrent items are held to be the result of elemental and universal forms or patterns in the human psyche, whose effective embodiment in a literary work evokes a profound response from the attentive reader, because he or she shares the psychic archetypes expressed by the author.

·       An important antecedent of the literary theory of the archetype was the treatment of myth by a group of comparative anthropologists at Cambridge University, especially James G. Frazer, who’s The Golden Bough (1890-1915), identified elemental patterns of myth and ritual that, claimed, recur in the legends and ceremonials of diverse and far-flung cultures and religions.

       An even more important antecedent was the depth psychology of Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), who applied the term “archetype” to what he called “primordial images”, the “psychic residue” of repeated patterns of experience in our very ancient ancestors which, he maintained, survive in the “collective unconscious” of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and private fantasies, as well as in works of literature.

Where is archetypal literary criticism manifested? Who are pioneers of archetypal literary criticism?

  Archetypal literary criticism was given impetus by Maud Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934) and flourished especially during the 1950s and 1960s.

·       Apart from him, the other prominent practitioners of various modes of archetypal criticism were G. Wilson Knight, Robert Graves, Philip Wheelwright, Richard Chase, Leslie Fiedler, and Joseph Campbell. These critics tended to emphasize the occurrence of mythical patterns in literature, on the assumption that myths are closer to the elemental archetype than the artful manipulation of sophisticated writers.

·       The death/re-birth theme was often said to be the archetype of archetypes, and was held t be grounded in the cycle of the seasons and the organic cycle of human life; this archetype, it was claimed, occur in primitive rituals of the king who is annually sacrificed, in widespread myths of gods who die to be reborn, and in a multitude of diverse texts, including the Bible, Dante’s Divine Comedy in the early 14th cen., and S.T.Coleridge’s Rime of Ancient Mariner in 1798.

·       What types of archetypal themes, images and characters are traced in literature by them?

   Among the other archetypal themes, images and characters frequently traced in literature were the journey underground, the heavenly ascent, the search, the Paradise/Hades dichotomy, the Promethean rebel-hero, the scapegoat, the earth goddess, and the fatal woman.

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

·       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.

·       Frye’s work breaks from both Frazer and Jung in such a way that it is distinct from its anthropological and psychoanalytical precursors.

·       In his remarkable and influential book Anatomy of Criticism (1957), N. Frye developed the archetypal approach into a radical and comprehensive revision of traditional grounds both in the theory of literature and the practice of literary criticism.

·       For Frye, the death-rebirth myth that Frazer sees manifest in agriculture and the harvest is not ritualistic since it is involuntary, and therefore, must be done.

·        As for Jung, Frye was uninterested about the collective unconscious on the grounds of feeling it was unnecessary: since the unconscious is unknowable it cannot be studied. How archetypes came to be was also of no concern to Frye; rather, the function and effect of archetypes is his interest.

·       Frye proposed that the totality of literary works constitute a “self-contained literary universe” which has been created over the ages by the human imagination so as to assimilate the alien and indifferent world of nature into archetypal forms that serve to satisfy enduring human desires and needs.

·       In this literary universe, four radical mythoi (i.e. plot forms, or organizing structural principles), correspondent to the four seasons in the cycle of the natural world, are incorporated in the four major genres of comedy (spring), romance (summer), tragedy (autumn), and satire (winter).

·       Within the overarching archetypal mythos of each of these genres, individual works of literature also play variations upon a number of more limited archetypes – that is, conventional patterns and types that literature shares with social rituals as well as with theology, history, law, and , in fact, all “discursive verbal structures.” Viewed archetypal, Frye asserted, literature turns out to play an essential role in refashioning the impersonal material universe into an alternative verbal universe that is intelligible and viable, because it is adapted to universal human needs and concerns.

·       There are two basic categories in Frye’s framework, i.e., comedic and tragic. Each category is further subdivided into two categories: comedy and romance for the comedic; tragedy and satire (or ironic) for the tragic. 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.

·       The context of a genre determines how a symbol or image is to be interpreted. Frye outlines five different spheres in his schema: human, animal, vegetation, mineral, and 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.

• 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”.

• Lastly, the water realm is represented by rivers in the comedic. With the tragic, the seas, and especially floods, signify the water sphere. Frye admits that his schema in “The Archetypes of Literature” is simplistic, but makes room for exceptions by noting that there are neutral archetypes. The example he cites are islands such as Circe’s or Prospero’s which cannot be categorized under the tragic or comedic.

How do contemporary critics view Frye’s archetypal criticism?

·       An argument about the Contemporary Dilemma with Frye’s Archetypal Literary Criticism

·        It has been 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 faces with more contemporary literature, and that of post-modernism in general, is that genres and categories are no longer distinctly separate and that the very concept of genres has become blurred, thus problematizing Frye’s schema. For instance Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is considered a tragicomedy, a play with elements of tragedy and satire, with the implication that interpreting textual elements in the play becomes difficult as the two opposing seasons and conventions that Frye associated with genres are pitted against each other.

·       But in fact, arguments about generic blends such as tragicomedy go back to the Renaissance, and Frye always conceived of genres as fluid. Frye thought literary forms were part of a great circle and were capable of shading into other generic forms. (Diagram of his wheel in Anatomy of Criticism )

What are other examples of archetype in literature?

Archetypes fall into two major categories: characters, situations/symbols. It is easiest to understand them with the help of examples. Listed below are some of the most common archetypes in each category.

Characters:

 1. The hero - The courageous figure, the one who's always running in and saving the day. Example: Dartagnon from Alexander Dumas's "The Three Musketeers". (Hamlet, Macbeth, Tom Jones, Moll …)

2. The outcast - The outcast is just that. He or she has been cast out of society or has left it on a voluntary basis. The outcast figure can oftentimes also be considered as a Christ figure. Example: Simon from William Golding's "The Lord of the Flies". (Pandavas, Ram-Sita-laxman, Sugreve, Duke, Orlando, Rosalind in As You like It, tramps in Godot …)

 3. The scapegoat - The scapegoat figure is the one who gets blamed for everything, regardless of whether he or she is actually at fault. Example: Snowball from George Orwell's "Animal Farm". [Tom Jones, Darcy in P&P (breaking of Lizzy’s sis’s relationship, elopement), Technology in BNW, Tess for death of Prince, giving birth to Sorrow,]

 4. The star-crossed lovers - This is the young couple joined by love but unexpectedly parted by fate. Example: Romeo and Juliet from William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". [Tess and Angel, Heer – Ranjha, Sheeri – Farhad,]

 5. The shrew - This is that nagging, bothersome wife always battering her husband with verbal abuse. Example: Zeena from Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome". [Katherina in Taming of Shrew, Paul’s mother in S&L, Lizzy’s mother in P&P.]

6. Femme Fatale- A female character type who brings upon catastrophic and disastrous events. Eve from the story of Genesis or Pandora from Greek mythology is two such figures.

7. The Journey- A narrative archetype where the protagonist must overcome a series of obstacles before reaching his or her goal. The quintessential journey archetype in Western culture is arguably Homer’s Odyssey

Situations/symbols: •Archetypal symbols vary more than archetype narratives or character types, but any symbol with deep roots in a culture's mythology, such as the forbidden fruit in Genesis or even the poison apple in Snow White, is an example of a symbol that resonates to archetypal critics.

• The task - A situation in which a character, or group of characters, is driven to complete some duty of monstrous proportion. Example: Frodo's task to keep the ring safe in J. R. R. Tolkien’s "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. (Arthurian Legends bring Helen back to Troy, Kurukshetra’s battle for Arjun, Savitri…)

• The quest - Here, the character(s) are searching for something, whether consciously or unconsciously. Their actions, thoughts, and feelings center on the goal of completing this quest. Example: Christian's quest for salvation in John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress". (Search for Holy Grail, Search for Sita, Nal-Damaanti, Savitri for Satyakam’s life, Shakuntala in Kalidas, Don Quixote, Jude,)

• The loss of innocence - This is, as the name implies, a loss of innocence through sexual experience, violence, or any other means. Example: Val's loss of innocence after settling down at the mercantile store in Tennessee William's "Orpheus Descending". [Moll, Tess, Tom, Jude,]

• Water - Water is a symbol of life, cleansing, and rebirth. It is a strong life force, and is often depicted as a living, reasoning force. Water r: birth-death-resurrection; creation; purification and redemption; fertility and growth.

·       Sea/ocean: the mother of all life; spiritual mystery; death and/or rebirth; timelessness and eternity.

• Rivers: death and rebirth (baptism); the flowing of time into eternity; transitional phases of the life cycle. . . . Example: Edna learns to swim in Kate Chopin's "The Awakening". [Water movie and novel by Bapsi Sidhwa, Death by Water, polluted River in Waste Land…]

Sun (fire and sky are closely related): creative energy; thinking, enlightenment, wisdom, spiritual vision.

Rising sun: birth, creation, enlightenment.

Setting sun: death

Colors:

Red: blood, sacrifice, passion; disorder

 Green: growth, hope, fertility

 Blue: highly positive; secure; tranquil; spiritual purity

 Black: darkness, chaos, mystery, the unknown, death, wisdom, evil, melancholy

 White: light, purity, innocence, timelessness; [negative: death, terror, supernatural]

Yellow: enlightenment, wisdom

 Serpent (snake, worm): symbol of energy and pure force (libido); evil, corruption, sensuality, destruction.

Numbers:

3 - Light, spiritual awareness, unity (the Holy Trinity); male principle

 4 - Associated with the circle, life cycle, four seasons; earth, nature, elements

 7 - the most potent of all symbolic numbers signifying the union of three and four, the completion of a cycle, perfect order, perfect number; religious symbol.

Wise old Man: savior, redeemer, guru, representing knowledge, reflection, insight, wisdom, intuition, and morality.

 Garden: paradise, innocence, unspoiled beauty.

Tree: denotes life of the cosmos; growth; proliferation; symbol of immortality; phallic symbol.

Desert: spiritual aridity; death; hopelessness.

Creation: All cultures believe the Cosmos was brought into existence by some Supernatural Being (or Beings).

Seasons:

 Spring - rebirth; genre/comedy.

Summer - life; genre/romance.

Fall - death/dying; genre/tragedy.

Winter - without life/death; genre/irony. (If winter has come, can spring be far behind?) (April is the cruelest month…)

The great fish: divine creation/life. (Matsyavatar)

Freud's symbolism/archetypes:

Concave images (ponds, flowers, cups, vases, hollows): female or womb symbols.

Phallic symbols (towers, mountain peaks, snakes, knives, swords, etc.) male symbols.

Dancing, riding, or flying: symbols of sexual pleasure.

Archetypal Examples from other Literary Text:

Hamlet: William Shakespeare is known for creating many archetypal characters that hold great social importance in his native land, such as Hamlet, the self-doubting hero and the initiation archetype with the three stages of separation, transformation, and return.

 Falstaff, the bawdy, rotund comic knight

Richard ll, the hero who dies with honor; and many others.

The Tempest: In ‘The Tempest’, Shakespeare borrowed from a manuscript by William Strachey that detailed an actual shipwreck of the Virginia-bound 17^th century English sailing vessel sea venture in 1609 on the islands of Bermuda. 

Conclusion:

So, we can say that Northrop Frye uses various symbols, patterns of action, themes, narrative design, and character-types in the wide variety of work of literature.