Mythological and Archetypal Approaches

Definitions and Misconceptions

The myth critics study the so-called archetypes or archetypal patterns. They wish to reveal about the people’s mind and character.

Myth is the symbolic projection of the people’s hopes, values,

fears, and aspirations. The illustration is Pandora’s Box.

According to mythology, Pandora’s Box is the source of all misfortune but also hope.

Both mythological criticism and the psychological approach are concerned with the motives that underlie human behavior.

Comparisons between these two approaches

Psychology tends to be experimental and diagnostic; it is related to biological science. Mythology tends to be speculative and philosophical; its affinities are with religion, anthropology, and cultural history.

MythAccording to OED (Oxford English Dictionary, Myth is:

1a. "A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces or creatures , which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon", citing the Westminster Review of 1830 as the first English attestation[3]

1b. "As a mass noun: such stories collectively or as a genre." (1840)

2a. "A widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief" (1849)

2b. "A person or thing held in awe or generally referred to with near reverential admiration on the basis of popularly repeated stories

(whether real or fictitious)." (1853)

2c. "A popular conception of a person or thing which exaggerates or idealizes the truth." (1928)

Myth, legends, fairytales

▪ myths - sacred stories concerning the distant past, particularly the creation of the world; generally focussed on the gods

▪ legends - stories about the (usually more recent) past, which generally include, or are based on, some historical events; generally focussed on human heroes

▪ folktales/fairytales (or Märchen, the German word for such tales) - stories whose tellers acknowledge them to be fictitious, and which lack any definite historical setting; often include animal characters

Types of Myths

▪ Ritual myths explain the performance of certain religious practices or patterns and associated

with temples or centers of worship.

▪ Origin myths (aetiologies) describe the beginnings of a custom, name or object.

▪Creation myths, which describes how the world or universe came into being.

▪Cult myths are often seen as explanations for elaborate festivals that magnify the power of the dei

ty.[citation needed]

▪ Prestige myths are usually associated with a divinely chosen king, hero, city, or people.[

citation needed]

▪ Eschatological myths are all stories which describe catastrophic ends to the present world

order of the writers. These extend beyond any potential historical scope, and thus can only be

described in mythic terms. Apocalyptic literature such as the New Testament Book of Revelation is

an example of a set of eschatological myths.

▪ Social myths reinforce or defend current social values or practices.

▪ the Trickster myth, which concerns itself with the pranks or tricks played by gods or heroes.

Heroes do not have to be in a story to be considered a myth.

Myth and Reality

J.R.R. Tolkien (scholar and the author of The Lord of Rings):

"I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of truth that can only be received in this mode."

F. W. J. Schelling, Introduction to Philosophy and Mythology:

“"Mythological representations have been neither invented nor freely accepted. The products of a process independent of thought and will, they were, for the consciousness which underwent them, of an irrefutable and incontestable reality.”

Myths are more than “old epic stories with gods and heros”, it is the reflection of our world and of ourselves.

Therefore myth is not only concerned with literature and art, but is also an important factor in sociology and psychology

Archetype

An archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object, or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned, or emulated.

In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior. This article is about personality archetypes, as described in literature analysis and the study of the psyche.

Examples of Archetypes: Images

1. Water:

a. The sea

b. Rivers (cf. The Mississippi River in Huckleberry Finn)

2. Sun

a. Rising sun

b. Setting sun

3. Colors

Archetypes are universal symbol.

This is Ouroboros.

4. Circle: wholeness, unity

a. Mandala

b. Egg (oval)

c. Yin-Yang

d. Ouroboros

5. Serpent (snake, worm)

6. Numbers

Mandala

Yin-Yang

7. The archetypal woman

a. The Good Mother (cf. The Widow Douglas in Huckleberry Finn)

b. The Terrible Mother (cf. Miss Watson in Huckleberry Finn)

c. The Soul Mate (cf. Mary Jane Wilks in Huckleberry Finn)

Miss Watson

8. The demon lover (cf. Blake’s “The Sick Rose” and the Jungian animus)

9. The Wise Old Man (cf. Jim in Huckleberry Finn)

10. The Trickster (“con man”—King and Duke in Huckleberry Finn)

11. Garden

12. Tree

13. Desert

14. Mountain

B. Archetypal Motifs or Patterns

1. Creation: perhaps the most fundamental of all archetypal motifs

2. Immortality (cf. “To His Coy Mistress”)

a. Escape from time

b. Mystical submersion into cyclical time

Andrew Marvell

3. Hero archetypes

a. The quest (cf. Oedipus)

b. Initiation (cf. Huck)

c. The sacrificial scapegoat (cf. Oedipus and Hamlet)

The dueling match in Hamlet is a pattern of sacrifice-

atonement-Catharsis

Oedipus the Rex

Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism, indicates the correspondent genres for the four seasons:

1. Spring: comedy

2. Summer: romance

3. Fall: tragedy (cf.

Hamlet)

4. Winter: irony

C. Archetypes as Genres

Louis Bouwmeester

(1842-1925) as Oedipus

Myth Criticism in Practice: A. Anthropology and Its Uses

Sir James G. Frazer, in his monumental The Golden Bough, demonstrates the “essential similarity of mans’ chief wants everywhere and at all times.”

Photo from 1990 Main Stage

Production of Oedipus Rex by

Sophocles

The central motif with which Frazer deals is the archetype of resurrection, specifically the myths describing the “killing of the divine king.” Corollary to the rite was the scapegoat archetype. (cf. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”)

The book cover of Shirley Jackson’s The

Lottery

Some other notable archetypes

▪ The Syzygy

▪ The Child

▪ The Wise old man

▪ The Trickster or Ape

▪ The Puer Aeternus (Latin for "eternal boy")

▪ The Cosmic Man

▪ The artist-scientist

Carl Gustav Jung is known as one of the

foremost psychological thinkers of the 20th

century.

B. Jungian Psychology

C.G. Jung rejected the “tabula rosa” notion of human psychological development.

Tabula rosa is the notion that human beings are like a white paper, without any innate psychological content.

Archetypes for Jung is the universal innate human psychic dispositions

"The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both

physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman

from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite

world into which he is already inborn in him as a virtual

image. Likewise, parents, wife, children, birth and death

are inborn in him as virtual images, as psychic aptitudes.

These [categories] have individual predestinations. We

must therefore, think of these images as lacking in solid

content, hence as unconscious. They only acquire solidity,

influence, and eventual consciousness in the encounter

with empirical facts."

- Jung 1928:Par. 300

C.G. Jung’s “myth forming” elements are in the unconscious psyche; he refers them as “motifs,” “primordial images,” or “archetypes.”

He also detected the relationship between dreams, myths, and art through which archetypes come into consciousness.

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.

Individuation: Shadows, Persona, and Anima

Process of individuation: 1. acknowledging that

these unconscious tendencies are part of

oneself, of one's personality

Shadow

The shadow is the darker aspects of our unconscious self, the inferior and less pleasing aspects of the personality, which we wish to suppress. (cf. Shakespeare’s Iago, Milton’s Satan, Goethe’s Mephistopheles, and Conrad’s Kurtz)

2. refusing to allow one's personality to be

compelled by these tendencies through

possession or projection

Anima

The anima is the “soul-image.” It is the contrasexual part of a man’s psyche, the image of the opposite sex that he carries in both his personal and collective unconscious. (cf. Helen of Troy, Dante’s Beatrice, Milton’s Eve)

Animus

Though less written about, Jung also believed that every woman has an analogous animus within her psyche, this being a set of unconscious masculine attributes and potentials.

He viewed the animus as being more complex than the anima, as women have a host of animus images while the male anima consists only of one dominant image.

Persona If the anima is a kind of mediator between the ego and the unconscious, the persona is the mediator between our ego and the external world. It is the actor’s mask that we show to the world.

Other Archetypal Concepts

Although archetypes are often associated with C.G. Jung, it is not Jung’s exclusive idea. There are many scholars who advocated in the idea of innate pyschic structures, e.g.:

Claude Levi Strauss in anthropology

Charles Darwin 'social instincts'

Henri Bergson 'faculties'

Noam Chomsky's ideas of 'innate acquisition device' of human language acquisition

Related works and links about mythological approaches

Jung, Carl Gustav. Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge,1969.

---. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U P,1980.

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1957.

Grazer, James G. The Golden Bough. Abridged ed. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

Introduction to Individuation. http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/persona.html

Personality and Consciousness– Major Archetypes and Individuation.http://pandc.ca/?cat=car_jung&page=major_archetypes_and_individuation

The Individuation Process

http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/individuationprocess.htm