D. Sujatha

Archetypal criticism requires close textual readings, like the formalistic, and yet it is concerned humanistically with more than the intrinsic value of aesthetic satisfaction. This method is a demonstration of some basic cultural pattern of great meaning and appeal to humanity in a work of art. The influence of Jung and Frazer assumes great significance while analyzing this method. While Frazer traces numerous myths back to prehistoric beginning, Jung’s chief contribution is the theory of the collective unconsciousness. Anthropological literature seeks to restore the primitive elements in human nature.

A critical approach that has been gaining considerable attention recently is the archetypal, sometimes called the totemic, mythological, or ritualistic it requires close textual readings , like the formalistic, and yet it is concerned humanistically with more than the intrinsic value of aesthetic satisfaction; it seems psychological insofar as it analyzes the work of art’s appeal to the audience (in a way, extending Richard’s investigations of the poem-reader relationship) and yet sociological in its attendance upon basic cultural patterns as central to that appeal; it is historical in its investigation of a cultural or social post, but nonhistorical in its demonstration of literature’s timeless value, independent of particular periods.

One can delineate the method as a demonstration of some basic cultural pattern of great meaning and appeal to humanity in a work of art. Such an approach reflects the strong contemporary interest in myth, and the influence of two figures whose work has been of great importance to us; Frazer and Jung.

The major work of Sir James George Frazer, the Scottish anthropologist, was, of course, The Golden Bough, which appeared in twelve volumes from 1890 to 1915. They constitute a monumental study of magic and religion, tracing numerous myths back to prehistoric beginning.

In the twenties, a number of scholars, mostly Cantabrigian turned their knowledge of the work of Frazer and Sir Edward Tylor to a new kind of study of the classics. The group, composed of Jane Harrison, F.M. Cornford, Gillbert Murray, Andrew Lang and others, dealt with the ritual conflicts underlying the work of the Greek tragedians and Homer.

Carl Gustav Jung, originally associated with Freud, departed from the work of his master with several concepts. So far as archetypal criticism is concerned, his chief contribution is the theory of the collective unconsciousness: that civilized man preserves, though unconsciously, those prehistorical areas knowledge which he articulated obliquely in myth mysterious appeal of “mythical stories long after the supernatural elements in them ceased to command belief.

The two forces represented by Frazer and Jung-asserting the validity of myth, and its retention in the social memory strongly appealed to the creative imagination. D.H. Lawrence’s motif of “blood consciousness” is obviously close to the theory that, sophisticated man should respond affirmatively to the elemental forces which alone can instruct him in the proper, “natural” modes of living.

For Eliot one of the main uses of these studies was their establishment of universal patterns of man, whatever his time and place, which enabled the poet to make simultaneous parallels to and contracts with figures and situations in the contemporary water-land. Precisely this advantage has led other writers to myth: Robert Grave’s James Joyce and Yeats and most recently C.S. Lewis has illustrated the appeal by retelling the story of Psyche and Cupid in such a way as to make it a prefiguration of man’s struggle toward eternal love.

Inevitably, literary critics were challenge examine literature with the hope of discovering the existence of underlying mythological patterns. The resulting analysis comes from the critic’s sense that “the deepest meanings, meanings which extent beyond the single work to a whole body of books, are to be-sought in the archetypal symbols to which writers compulsively turn. Freud had established that rituals and taboos were dealt with consciously by primitive man, but unconsciously by civilized man. Freudians tended to look upon “the atavistic retention of such taboos as forms of illness. The Jungains, however, regarded myth not as the dream of the inhabited individual person, but a protoplastic pattern of the race which solar as the individual repeats it, bespeaks riot illness but his natural participation hi the collective unconsciousness. Myth is, in the terms of Erich From “a message from ourselves to ourselves, a secret language which enables’ us to treat inner as if outer event.

The Significance of Archetypal Criticism

Proceedings of UGC Sponsored ONE DAY National Workshop on LITERARY CRITICISM AND LITERARY THEORIES (LCLT-2015) 51

ISBN 978-93-84743-58-1 © 2015 Bonfring

The artist, thus, is not a neurotic but a “shaman, a myth-maker, speaking out of his unconscious a primordial truth.” Archetypal criticism, then, aims to discover and decode the secret language in literary works so that it may have for us a more rational meaning.

D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature, 1923 as one might except from his creative interest in the nonrational forces of life, exhibits an inclination to consider various fictitious characters (Natty Bumppo, Hester Prynne) as archetypes and various plots as fulfilling fundamental patterns.

Kenneth Burke often relies-for-example, in his concept of “symbolic action” on social anthropology. For him the artist is often a.” medicine man” and the work of art, his “medicine.” In pursuit of the implied relationship between poet, poem. .and audience, Burke often discusses taboos, fetishes, ritual paradigms. In one of his bets essays, for example, “Antony in Behalf of the Play,” he works out the strategy of Shakespeare’s drama as rendered necessary by the traditional feelings of the audience toward authority, revolution, and scapegoat.

Archetypal criticism does not necessarily go back; to specific myths; it may discover basic cultural patterns which assume a mythic quality in their permanence within a particular culture. American cultural involving relationship between men reflected sometimes in the rituals of boyhood gangs, sometimes in unconsciously symbolic ceremonies of adults. He finds this scheme employed in American novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Moby-Dick one basic objection is that archetypal criticism does not lead to evaluation of literature so much as to an explanation of the fundamental appeal of certain writing

The totemic approach obviously reflects the contemporary dissatisfaction with the scientific concept of man as, at his highest, rational. Anthropological literature seeks to restore to us our entire humanity, a humanity which values the primitive elements in human nature. In contrast to the splitting of the human mind by subconscious processes, anthropological literature re-establishes us as members of the ancient race of man and archetypal criticism seeks to discover in literature the dramatizations of this membership.

Archetypal criticism studies the text closely like the formalists critic, concerns, itself with humanistic values like the moral critic, analyses arts appeal to an audience as the psychological critic, probes basic cultural patterns like the sociological critic, and investigates a social past like the historical critic. The influence of Jung and Frazer assumes great significance while analyzing this method. While Frazer traces numerous myths back to prehistoric beginning, Jung’ chief contribution is the theory of the collective unconsciousness. Archetypal criticism does not necessarily go back; to specific myths; it may discover basic cultural patterns which assume a mythic quality in their permanence within a particular culture. Anthropological literature re-establishes us as members of the ancient race man and Archetypal criticism seeks to discover in literature the dramatizations of this membership.

REFERENCE

[1] Five Approaches of Literary Criticism by Wilbur S. Scott [2] A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature by Wilfred L. Querin

Proceedings of UGC Sponsored ONE DAY National Workshop on LITERARY CRITICISM AND LITERARY THEORIES (LCLT-2015) 52

ISBN 978-93-84743-58-1 © 2015 Bonfring