Northrop Frye: Archetype Literature and Myth or religion

The Archetypes of Literature (1951): Northrop Frye

Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.

Frye gained international fame with his first book, Fearful Symmetry (1947), 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 (1957), one of the most important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century. 

1.  What is Archetypal Criticism? What does the archetypal critic do?

=)  In literary criticism, the term archetype denotes recurrent narratives designs, patterns of action, character-types, themes, and images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even social rituals. Such recurrent items are held to be the result of elemental and universal forms or patterns in the human psyche, whose effective embodiment in a literary work evokes a profound response from the attentive reader because he or she shares the psychic archetypes expressed by the author.

Archetypal literary criticism's origins 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 its most popular in the 1940s and 1950s, largely due to the work of Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. Though archetypal literary criticism is no longer widely practised, nor have there been any major developments in the field, it still has a place in the tradition of literary studies.


2.  What is Frye trying to prove by giving an analogy of ' Physics to Nature' and 'Criticism of Literature'?

=)   In this Frye compare both Physics to Nature and Criticism to Literature. Physics is a deep study of Nature but it called physics, not Nature though it is based on Nature only it called physics. In the same manner, In the literature, we are not learning the literature but we learn to understand literature,  how to read and how to criticise literature so we are not Learn literature but criticise literature. So it is the criticism of literature. So Literature is equal to Nature and Physics is equal to Criticism.

3.  Share your views of Criticism as an organised body of knowledge.

=)  Literature is the central division of Humanities. Historical sense and Philosophy are about morality, ethics and all these things are required when we study literature. Philosophy is about existence and it progressively moves on, its ideas never stopped. Northrop Frye says that without reasoning and thinking to jump on any type of conclusion is not valid to process. we have to look upon the framework of history which is based on evidence. Histories are never written without evidence. BUT THAT FRAMEWORK OF HISTORY MUST BE CHECKED, sometimes history also makes a division in society. Every idea has a framework and how it grows is important to understand.

4.  Briefly explain the inductive method with an illustration of Shakespeare's Hamlet's Grave Digger's scene.

Inductive method – Example to Rule

Northrop Frye gives the example of Gravedigger’s scene from “Hamlet” to explain this method. To study this scene we need to go step by step backwards to study this method:

a.)       First, the question of existence can be seen. Every man dies at one point.

b.)       Second, the image of corruption can be seen.

c.)       Third, we see Hamlet’s love for Ophelia.

Hamlet represents Archetypal hero who is ready to die for his love.

This method moves from “Particular to General”.

5.  Briefly explain Deductive Method with reference to an analogy to music, painting, rhythm and pattern. Give an example of the outcome of the Deductive Method.

=)   In the Deductive Method, it comes from general to specific or particular observations. In this Music has rhyme and Painting has patterns. Both are connected while listening to the music for the first time we can't understand but when we start to understand the words we image a picture in the mind by this imagination we understand the things. As the same thing happens while reading literature we image the things through the imagination it helps us to understand the literature. So music, rhythm, painting, a pattern so it helps to understand the literature.

6.  Refer to the Indian seasonal grid (below). If you can, please read small Gujarati or Hindi or English poem from the archetypal approach and apply Indian seasonal grid in the interpretation.

In school time we have studied seasonal poem in Gujarati,
કેસુડાની કળીએ બેસી ફાગણિયો લહેરાયો...

We studied in BA William Wordsworth's poem 'The Daffodils' and in this poetry Wordsworth gives a definition of poetry.

Also in MA, we studied 'Wordsworth and Coleridge - the study of poets' 

John Keat's poetry 'Ode to Autumn' and 'The Human Seasons'.

★ Literature and Religion: Northrop Frye - ritual, myth and the archetype of literature

The term Myth is beginning a brief study of the opinions and definitions of the theorists and intellectuals of the relevant disciplines like Anthropology, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Literary Criticism. The term myth has multiple dimensions in the philosophical, social, cultural and psychological premises.

Myths are usually considered as fairy tales or beautifully narrated escapes of imagination created by old people for their entertainment or consolation in the face of mysterious natural phenomena. Myths have a profound impact on human lives even as they are formed by, the way human beings live.

Northrop Fry in The Secular Scripture points out that myth is a drive towards a verbal outline of human experience. It is the external presence in the psyche.  Many things have been handed down to humanity in a Satanist form in human nature, manifesting itself in man’s dream that enables a person to glimpse the past.

Northrop Frye extract archetypes and
essential mythic formula from the genres and individual plot patterns of literature. He tended to emphasize the circumstance of mythical patterns in literature. He assumed that myths are closer to the elemental archetype than the artful manipulations of sophisticated writers. The death or rebirth theme was often said to be the archetype of archetypes and was held to ground in the cycle of the seasons and the organic cycle of human life.

Frye makes the distinction of shifting the notion of the archetype from the psychological to the literary. Frye proposes that concealed symbolic narratives exist across all humankind and all history, and have the potential to influence our lives at an almost invisible level. Thus, he makes myth his most important concept, supporting a new poetics that is the principle of his mythological framework.

As Northop Frye puts, the typical forms of myth become the conventions and genres of literature. Frye presents the following example of a mythic scheme with which to understand art, based upon the cycle of fertility myth. Each season is associated with a literary genre: comedy with spring, romance with summer, tragedy with autumn, and satire with winter. Comedy is associated with spring because the genre of comedy is characterized by the birth of the hero, revival, and resurrection. In addition, spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and darkness. 

Romance and summer are connected because summer is the culmination of a life in the seasonal calendar, and the romance genre ends with some sort of triumph, usually marriage. Autumn is the dying stage of the calendar, which parallels the tragedy genre because it is known for the death of the protagonist. Satire is associated with winter because satire is a dark, disillusioned and mocking form and the defeat of the heroic figure. Frye formulated that the totality of literary works constitutes a ‘self-contained literary universe’ which has been created over the ages by the human imagination.


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