Mythological and Archetypal Approaches

Mythological Approach

Definitions
It seeks out those mysterious elements that inform certain literary works and that elicit, with almost uncanny force, dramatic and universal human reactions. The myth critic wishes to discover how certain works of literature, usually those that have become, or promise to become, "classics," image a kind of reality to which readers give perennial response--while other works, seemingly as well constructed, and even some forms of reality, leave them cold.
the myth critic studiesthe so-called archetypes or archetypal patterns that the writer has drawn forward along the tensed structural wires of his or her masterpieces and that vibrate in such a way that a sympathetic resonance is set off deep within the reader.

Misconceptions

Myths are merely primitive fictions, illusions, or opinions based upon false reasoning. Actually, mythology encompasses more than grade school stories about the Greek and Roman deities or clever fables invented for the amusement of children

Archetypal Examples

   1. Images

Water: the mystery of creation, birth, death, resurrection (River: death and rebirth= baptism) (sea: mother of all life)

 

Sun: creative energy; law in nature; consciousness and father principle 

Colors:

§  Red (blood, sacrifice, violent passion: disorder)

§  Green (growth, hope, fertility)

§  Blue (associated with truth, religious feeling, security, spiritual purity)

§  Black (chaos, mystery, the unknown, death,  primal wisdom; the unconscious; evil; melancholy)

§  White (light, purity, innocence, and timelessness; death, terror, supernatural)

Circle: wholeness, unity.

§  Mandala (the desire for spiritual unity and psychic integration)

§  Egg (the mystery of life and the forces of generation)

§  Yang-yin (Chinese symbol, representing the union of the opposite forces of the yang (masculine principle, light, activity, the conscious mind) and the yin (female principle, darkness, passivity, the unconscious)

Serpent: symbol of energy and pure force: evil, corruption, sensuality; destruction; mystery; wisdom.

Numbers

§  Three (light; spiritual awareness and unity)

§  Four (associated with the circle, life cycle, four seasons; female principle, earth, nature; four elements: earth, air, fire, water)

§  Five (integration, four cardinal points and the center)

§  Seven (the most potent of all symbolic numbers--signifying the union of three and four, the completion of a cycle, perfect order)

Archetypal woman

§  The Good Mother (associated with the life principle, birth, warmth, nourishment, protection, fertility, growth, abundance)

§  The Terrible Mother (the witch, sorceress, siren, whore, femme fatale--associated with sensuality, sexual orgies, fear, danger, darkness, dismemberment)

§  The Soul Mate (the Sophia figure, Holy Mother, the princess or "beautiful lady")

The Demon Lover

     The Devil, Satan, Dracula

The Wise Old Man

      Representing "knowledge, reflectio, insight, wisdom, cleverness.

The Trickster

     The opposite of the wise old man because of his close affinity with the shadow archetype

Garden

 Paradise; innocence; unspoiled beauty (especially feminine); fertility.

Tree
Life of the cosmos: its consistence, growth, proliferation, generative and regenerative processes.

        
Desert
Spiritual aridity; death; nihilism, hopelessness.

           
Mountain
Aspiration and inspiration; mediation and spiritual elevation.

  
  2.   Archetypal Motifs and Patterns

Creation: virtually every mythology is built on some account of how the cosmos, nature, and humankind were brought into existence by some supernatural Being or beings.

Immortality: generally taking one of two basic narrative forms:

Escape from time: "return to paradise,"

Mystical submersion into cyclical time

Hero Archetypes

        
     The quest: the hero (savior, deliverer)

     Initiation: the hero undergoes a series of excruciating ordeals in passing from ignorance and immaturity to social and spiritual adulthood

    The sacrificial scapegoat

   3. Archetypes as Genres

Indicates the correspondent genres for the four seasons as follows:

• The mythos of spring: comedy
• The mythos of summer: romance
• The mythos of fall: tragedy
• The mythos of winter: irony

Jungian Psychology & its Archetypal Insights.

The great psychologist-philosopher and onetime student of Freud.

Jung´s primary contribution to myth criticism is his theory of racial memory and archetypes. Jung believed, that “Mind is not born as a tabula rasa (a clean slate)”. Like the body, it has pre- established individual definiteness; namely, forms of behavior. They become manifest in the ever recurring patterns of psychic functioning”. Therefore what Jung called “myth forming” structural elements are ever present in the unconscious psyche; he refers to the manifestations of the elements as “motifs”, “primordial images”, or “archetypes”.

 

Archetypes: are not inherited ideas or patterns of thought, but rather that they are predispositions to respond in similar ways to certain stimuli. 

      He theorized that myths so not derive from external factor such as the seasonal or solar cycle but are, in truth, the projections of innate psychic phenomena. Myths are the means by which archetypes, essentially unconscious forms, become manifest and articulate to the conscious mind. Jung indicated further that archetypes reveal themselves in the dreams of individuals, so that we might say that dreams are “personalized myths” and myths are “depersonalized dreams”.

            Jung detected an intimate relationship between dreams, myths and art in that all three serve as media through which archetypes become accessible to consciousness. The great artist, is a person who possesses “primordial vision”, a special sensitivity to archetypal patterns and a gift for speaking in primordial images that enable him or her to transmit experiences of the “inner world” through art.

.   Some Special Archetypes: Shadow, Persona, & Anima.

Jung´s theory of individuation as related to those archetypes designated as the shadow, the persona, and the anima. Individuation is a psychological growing up, the process of discovering those aspects of one´s self that make one an individual different from other members of the species. It is essentially a process of recognition that is, as one matures, the individual must consciously recognize the various aspects, unfavorable as well as favorable, of one´s total self.

The shadow, the persona, and the anima are structural components of the psyche that human beings have inherited, just as the chicken has inherited his built in response to the hawk. In melodrama, such as the traditional television or film western or cop story, the persona, the anima, and the shadow are projected, respectively, in the characters of the hero, the heroine, and the villain.

·      The Shadow, is the darker side of our unconscious self, the inferior and less pleasing aspects of the personality, which we wish to suppress. The most common variant of this archetype, when projected, is the Devil, who, in Jung´s words, represents the “dangerous aspect of the unrecognized dark half of the personality”.

·  The Anima, is perhaps the most complex of Jung´s archetypes. It is the “soul image”, the spirit of a man´s élan vital, his life force of vital energy. In the sense of “soul”, says Jung, anima is the “living thing in man that which lives of itself and causes life…. Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul, man would rot away in his greatest passion, idleness”. Jung gives the anima a feminine designation in the male psyche, pointing out that “the anima image is usually projected upon women”. Following his theory, we might say that any female figure who is invested with unusual significance or power is likely to be a symbol of anima.

The Persona, is the obverse of the anima in that it mediates between our ego and the external world. Speaking metaphorically, let us say that the ego is a coin. The image on one side is the anima; on the other side, the persona. The persona is the actor´s mask that we show to the world it is our social personality that is sometimes quite different from our true self. The individual must have a flexible, viable persona that can be brought into harmonious relationship with the other components of his or her psychic makeup. He states, furthermore, that a persona that is too artificial or rigid results in such symptoms of neurotic disturbance as irritability and melancholy.

Limitations of Myth Criticism

vMyth critics have posited that certain archetypical and mythic patterns are “universal,” some contemporary theorists disagree with this idea, arguing particularly that the work of Jung is based upon culturally specific, Western mythology.

vThe reader must take care that enthusiasm for a new-found interpretive key does not tempt him or her to discard other valuable critical instruments or to try to open all literary doors with this single key.

Links

Video What is an Archetype?
Mythic Approach Mythic Approach

Taken from:

`A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 3d ed. ed., Wilfred L. Guerin [et al.] New York: Oxford University Press, 1992