Archetypal Criticism

The term archetype in literary criticism defines recurring (happening again and again) narrative designs, patterns of action, character types or images which are said to be identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, myths, dreams and social rituals. Northrop Frye is the best known practitioner and spokesman of archetypal or myth criticism.

Earnest Cassirer, a social anthropologist was an important influence on myth criticism. For Cassirer, reason alone cannot lead to truth, but mythical thinking which focuses on immediate experience is essential. Another important influence was Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) who used the term archetype to what he called “primordial images”. According to him the “psychic residue” of the repeated patterns of experience in the lives of our ancestors survives in the “Collective Unconscious” of the human race. This is expressed in myth, religion, dreams and private fantasies as well as in works of literature.

Important practitioners of various modes of archetypal criticism are Maud Bodkin, Wilson Knight, Robert Graves, Philip Wheel Wright, Richard Chase and Joseph Campbell. Northrop Frye contributed the most to the mythic method, especially as a school of criticism. In the introduction to his Anatomy of Criticism (1957), Frye argued for a varied field of study called “archetypal criticism’” In this book the four radical platforms correspond to four seasons in the cycle of natural world. They are incorporated in the four major ‘genres’ of comedy (spring), romance (summer), tragedy (autumn) and satire (winter). Frye expanded the theory in his long series of later writings.