Northrop Frye:" Arhetypal ctriticism "

Assignment topic: Northopfrye’s Archetypal Criticism

Name: Goswami Gayatri Mahipatgiri

Roll no.:09

M.A. Semester – 2

Paper no.:7 literary theory and criticism

Submitted to: Department of English

Smt. S. B. Gardi

Maharaja Krishnakumar sinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction: Northrop Frye

Harman Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20^th century. Frye gained international fame with his first book, Fearful Symnely, which led to the reinterpretation of the poetry of William Blake. His lasting reputation rests principally on the theory of literary criticism that he developed in Anatomy of Criticism, one of the most important work of literary theory publish in the 20^th century.

Archetypal literary criticism:

Term comes from “Arch” both and adjective and a prefix, and “Type” noun “arch” as an adjective means literary “chief” or “principal”. As a prefix, it refers to “highest” or “most important” consider word like “Archangel” or “Archbishop”. “Type” from the Latin “Typus” means as “image” or “impression”. It refers to general character train or structure commonly had in a certain group or class; it is an embodiment of or a example, a mode with ideal features. A type may be figure, representation, or a symbol of something to come, consider work like “typical” or “typify” and a shadow.

Be a narrow definition and an archetype is an original mode or type after which similar things are patterned; a prototype; and an ideal example.

Archetypal literary criticism is most famous theory written by Northrop Frye. Archetypal literary that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and Archetypal in the narrative symbols, image, and character types in literary work. As a form of literary criticism, it dates back to 1934 when mauled bodkin published Archetypal patterns poetry. Archetypal literary criticism origins to are rooted in two other academic disciplines, social Anthropology and psychoanalysis, each contributed to literary criticism in separate ways, with the latter being a sub-branch of critical theory. Archetypal criticism was at it most popular in the 1940s and 1950s largely due to the work of condition literary critic Northrop Frye. Though Archetypal literary criticism no longer widely did not practice nor have there been any major developments in the field, it still has a place in the tradition of literary studies.

Archetypal criticism as “A new poetics”:

Archetypal  criticism as a most of a new poetic. Frye; this “new poetics” is to be found in the principal of the mythological framework, which has come to be known as “Archetypal criticism”. It is through the lens of this framework, which is essentially a centrifugal movement of backing up from the text the towards of literary criticism becomes apparent essentially, “what criticism can do” according to Frye, “is awaken students to successive levels of awareness of the mythology that lies behind the ideology in which their society in doctrinaires them”. The student is great and makes a great structure.

 That is, the study of recurring structure pasterns grants students an emancipation distance from their own society, and gives theme vision of a higher human state the logician sublime. That is not accessible directly through their own experience, but ultimately transforms and expands their experience, so that the poetic model he terms a “kerugmatik mode” , myths become “myth to live by” and metaphors “metaphors to live In ”which  not only   work for us but constantly expand our horizons , we may enter the world of and pass  on to others  what we have found to be  true for ourselves “.

As important antecedent of the literary theory of the Archetype.

Archetypal criticism was the treatment of myth by a group of computer.

Northrop Frye working in the field of literature defined Archetypes as a symbol, usually an image. Gerald gannet as the structuralist, no story perfectly match the archetype and some stories will diverse from the archetype more than the others.

Archetype can be:

·       Symbol

·       Image

·       Characters

·       Plot structures

They are revealed in:

·       Myth

·       Religions and folklore

·       Dream and fantasies

·       Literature, dream and film

Archetypal criticism is character type, story Lines, setting, and symbol. According to Jung, these a pattern are embedded deep in the “collective unconscious” and involve “racial memories” of situations. Event, relationship from time immemorial.  Northrop Frye’s book “The Anatomy of Criticism” views literature as an   “autonomous language” and words as a signs that contributed to the organizing structural pattern or “conceptualize myth” of which the work is one example.

Frye proposes for “Mythos” for major genre associated with the season of the year:

1.   Comedy – Spring

2.   Romance – Summer

3.   Satire and Irony  – Winter

4.   Autumn – Tragedy

Literary critics who subscribe to Jung’s Archetypal theory seek to identity. Archetypes and trace pattern in diverse literary work across eras and cultures. One of the most often trace Archetypal patterns is that of the quest by the protagonist, who must leave her home, travel into unfamiliar territories, meet a guide, endure dangerous  situations and adventures, rich the object of her quest, gain important new knowledge, and return home with that knowledge to share with the others.

Archetypal pattern and the tensed structural of the masterpiece and the vibrate in such way that a sympathetic reasons is set of deep within reader.

·      Comedy=spring :

Comedy is aligned with a spring because the genre of comedy as a characterized by the birth of the hero, revival and resurrection. Also spring symbolize the defeat of a winter and darkness.

·      Romance=summer:

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 a triumph, usually a marriage.

·      Satire=winter:

Satire is a metonym zed with a winter on the grounds that a satire is a “dark genre”. Satire is a disillusion and mocking form of the three other genres. It is noted for it darkness, disillusion, the return of a chaos, and the defect of the heroic figure.

·      Autumn=tragedy:

Autumn is the dying stage of seasonal calendar, which parallel the tragedy genre because it is, known for the “fall”, or a demise of the protagonist.

The context of a genre determines and highlighted of the autumn is tragedy Shawn:

·      The world of human:

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, while animals are predatory and hunters in the tragic.

·      Realm of vegetation:

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.

Northrop Frye admits that his schema in “The Archetypes of Literature” is simplistic, but makes room for exception 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.