Northrop Frye's contribution of the Archetypal criticism

M.K. B.U.   Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English

Assignment sub: Northrop Frye’s contribution to the Archetypal Criticism

Paper no: 7      -    Literary Criticism -   Unit: 2

Name: Drashti V. Dave

Roll no:  7          Sem.2       Year: 2014

Northrop Frye’s contribution to the Archetypal Criticism

Simple meaning of the Archetypal criticism: Archetypal criticism argues that archetypes determine the form and function of literary work that a text’s meaning is shaped by cultural and psychological myths.

Archetypal images and story patterns encourage readers 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.  Generally archetypal criticism is a type of criticism that focuses on particular archetypes, narrative themes, patterns, motifs, characters that recur in a particular literary work or in literature in general.

Archetypal criticism is said to increase both the knowledge of a literary piece and the satisfaction in reading the work. An archetypal critic would suggest that all human experience is expressed again and again using the same patterns throughout time and space. Archetypes were first suggested by Carl Jung.

Jungian psychology: Jung was a psychologist who applied the term archetype to the “primordial images” that spring from our common human experience. Jung suggested that we all share a “collective unconscious” in which all of the history of human experience in contained and to which we all have access through our subconscious minds.

Categories of Archetypes: Archetypes can be devided into categories –conflicts – characters – situations – themes – myths – symbols. There are many conflicts in archetypal that are; young vs. old, strong vs. weak, rich vs. poor, insider vs. outsider, dreams vs. real.

Archetypal characters: Innocent youth, Bully, Everyman, Devil, Scapegoat, Outcast, Magician, Shrew, Warrior, Dragon slayer, Hero, Seductress, Wanderer.

Northrop Frye, an archetypal critic, suggests that literary archetypes can be classified by genre and these genres seems to the seasons of the years and the life cycle of humanity Frye’s thesis in ‘The Archetypes of Literature’ remains largely unchanged in Anatomy to 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.

Frye and Jungian Archetypal criticism:- Jung expresses his concept of archetype in a variety of ways, which includes  a comparison with Plato’s pure forms. Archetype literally means ‘First print’ and references to those images in the human mind that have been present since the down of time.

Jungian concepts in the study of literature is Maud Bodkin’s Archetypal patterns in poetry (1934) which demonstrated the author’s interest in the way which ancient symbolism is replicated in words across a long period of time.

In his (Frye’s) remarkable and influential book Anatomy of criticism (1957) Northrop Frye developed the archetypal approach into a radical and comprehensive revision of traditional grounds both in the Theory of literature and literary criticism. The Death/ re-birth theme was often said to be the archetype of archetypes, and was held to be grounded in the cycle of the seasons and the organic cycle of human. Life; it is related with myths also, Myth is our national identity, it is half-truth, no one can prove myths and here in archetypal criticism myths is interrelated with Frye’s view.   

Myths of gods who die to be reborn  there are many texts including Bible, Dante’s Devine comedy in early 14^th century and S.T Coledrige’s The rime of the ancient mariner in 1798 are the examples of archetype. Among the other archetypal themes, images, and characters frequently traced in literature were the journey, underground, the heavenly ascent, the search, the paradise, the promethean, the earth goddess, the fetal woman.                                                           

                               In fetal woman there are also types of archetypal woman; the good mother, the terrible mother, the soul mate. According to Frye’s archetypal criticism in any theory or literary work there are three perspectives; first come writerà than workà than come reader.  Frye proposed that the totality of literary works constitute a “self-contained literary universe” in this literary universe four radical mythos, i.e. plot forms organization structural principles. Correspondent to the four seasons in the cycle of the natural world that four seasons are interrelated with four major genres of comedy, it is related with seasons.

Season’s     à     genres

Comedy      à    spring

Romance   à      summer

Tragedy    à      autumn

Satire        à      winter

There are two basic categories in Frye’s framework comedies and tragedies. Frye uses the seasons in his archetypal schema each seasons in aligned with a literary genre: comedy with spring, romance with summer, tragedy with autumn, satire with winter.

Comedy:  comedy focuses on the social group often setting up an arbitrary law or humorous society and setting out to reform it. Comedy is aligned with spring because the genre of comedy is characterized by the birth of the hero revival and resurrection.

Also spring symbolized the defeat of winter and darkness. The hero’s society, which prevails in the end is really a reversal of social standards disappeared before beginning of the play.

Irony and satire: irony and satire parody romance by applying romantic mythical forms. It presents an image where reality rather than ideology is dominant. Satire is metonymies with winter on the grounds that satire is a “dark” genre. Satire is militant irony. Satire must carefully select content to criticize it is at least implicitly from of the three other genres.

Romance:  romance related with summer both are paired together because summer is the culmination of life in the seasonal calendar, and romance genre culminates with some sort of triumph. Frye’s analysis of romance draws upon the same criteria to define the typical romantic forms: plot, conflict, development, theme, resolution and mythos.

The essential element in the plot of romance, he maintains in adventure and thus preventing from becoming a series of endless repetitions plot, the first two stages assume a central importance for they relate to the conflict between the hero and his antagonist.

Autumn:  major movement toward the death or defeat of the hero for example: King Lear, in this play we are shown this type of element. Autumn known as fall, it is also known as Harvest season because this time peoples harvesting grain and other things. Autumn is the dying stage of the seasonal calendar, which parallels the tragedy genre it is known for the fall or demise of the protagonist. That all four seasons are connected with a literary genre.

In Tony Morrison’s novel “The Bluest Eyes” she decribes all four seasons in her novel, in this novel she connected four seasons with human life and literary genre. According to her novel autumn, spring, summer, and winter that four are symbols of human’s life birth, maturity, fall and death. She beautifully decribes seasons step by step connect with human’s life. In her novel autumn is also symbolize death, end of the human life. Here Frye also connect seasons in his criticism.

Here we are shown table of the relationship between natural cycle, rituals, myth, and literary genre.

Seasonal cycle	Archetypal patterns	Literary genre
Dawn/spring/birth	The birth revival resurrection of hero	Romance
Summer/zenith/ Marriage or triumph	The triumph, marriage, age or apotheosis of the hero	Comedy, pastoral
Sunset/autumn/ Impending death	The fall, sacrifice, isolation, or death of the hero	Tragedy, elegy
Night/winter dissolution	The unheroic nature of the hero	Satire

Frye points out that all literary genres are initially “derived form” and thus variations on the “quest-myth”. Each genre gestures towards a particular kind of human quest. In other words, the hero may triumph (comedy), fail or killed (tragedy), reborn (romance), or be the object of criticism rather than adulation (satire).

Each pattern of actions and each genre are traceable and correspond to a particular cycle, especially of the seasons;

Comedy- summer- midday

Tragedy- autumn- dusk

Satire- winter- night

Romance - spring- morning.

The context of a genre determines how a symbol or image is to be interpreted Frye outlines five different sphere in his schema; i) human ii) animal iii) vegetation iv) mineral v) water.

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

Animals in the comedic genres are docile and pastoral e.g. sheep, cow while animals are predatory and hunters in the tragic Frye gave much importance to the spheres in animals also.

For the realm of vegetation, the comedic is again pastoral but also represented by gardens, parks, roses, and lotuses vegetation has no particular life forms, structures or any specific botanical or geographic characteristics. Vegetation is for a wild forest.

Cities, temples or precious represent the comedic mineral realm the tragic mineral realm is noted for being a desert ruins or “of sinister geometrical images” it is a maturely occurring substance that is solid and stable.

And last the water realm is represented by rivers in the comedic with the seas and especially floods, signify the water covers huge part of earth and it is vital for all known forms of life. For example of the river, The Mississippi River in Huckleberry Finn.

Frye admits  that his schema in “archetypal of literature” is simplistic but makes room for exceptions by nothing that there natural archetypal, it has been argued that Frye’s archetypal criticism strictly categories. Works based on genres which determine archetype is to be interpreted in a text.

Frye’s archetypal criticism focuses with more contemporary literature. Frye’s schema for instance Beckett’s waiting for godot is to considered  a tragicomedy, a play with elements of tragedy and satire Frye associated with genres are pitted against each other.

Conclusion:   Archetypal criticism is one of them in four types of literary criticism. It is  related with the theory of myth he differentiate many thing in archetypal, his one quote is; “ A snowflake is probably quite unconscious of forming a crystal, but what it does may be worth study even if we are willing to leave its inner mental processes alone”—by Northrop Frye, Anatomy of criticism, four essays.

Archetypal is study of myth and myth is very important tool in literature so ‘every work of literature has its place within this scheme or myth, every piece of literature adds to the myth.’