Archetypal Approach to Literature

            Archetypes are patterns and models that is first model in anything.  For example in Greek mythology Hercules, as an infant, kills two huge snakes.  Similarly, Krishna, as an infant in Hindu mythology, kills a demon.  In these two mythological stories, the first archetype is an infant of divine origin performing miracles.

            We believe that in infancy myth and experience of common man are incorporated in everyone’s life.  Jung, a psychoanalyst, says that experiences live in the form of archetypes in the unconscious minds of every man.  He invents a phrase called ‘collective unconscious’, which refers to the symbols that are buried in every man.  It is said that these symbols would suddenly erupt in him and would lead to unusual actions.  Sigmund Freud says that these symbols come in the form of dreams.

            Archetypal approach is also called as mythological criticism.  Myth is a fable and not a false tale.  Myths are a storehouse of symbols regulating man’s assumptions about life, death and universe.  Rituals are myth in action.  Myth is also found among tribes.  Archaeologists, anthropologists and linguists affirm the power of myth.  Myth lives in rituals and teaches men morality.

A few examples of universal myth are as follows:

1.      A child though an orphan, of divine parentage, becomes superhuman and becomes the savior of land.

2.      A man driven into exile combats life and becomes a ruler.

3.      A man forced into slavery performs impossible feats of strength, gets his freedom and real stature.

The central pattern of all myth is that they show the rhythm of life – a rise followed by a fall and by a rise.  Sir James Frazer in his The Golden Bough, compares lifecycle with that of the four seasons – spring, summer, autumn and winter.  Wilson Knights in his The Starlit Dome talks about myth in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and in Coleridge’s “The Ancient Mariner”.

Greeks and Romans used myth to a great extent.  Elizabethans used it sparingly.  In English literature myths were given utmost importance by writers like T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce.  The function of myth in literature is to provide a background familiar to the reader and the writer.  Myths acts as a bridge between the reader and the writer.  Myth in drama is studied extensively.