Sima's Blog: Thinking Activity : Northrop Frye

NORTHROP FRYE AND THE ARCHETYPES OF LITERATURE
LITERATURE AND RELIGION : RITUALS , MYTHS AND ARCHETYPES OF LITERATURE

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welcome to my blog, Today's blog is about Northrope Frye and his essay The Archetypes of Literature .

Herman Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist ,considered as one of the most influential critics 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. The American critic Harold Bloom commented at the time of its publication that Anatomy established Frye as "the foremost living student of Western literature." Frye's contributions to cultural and social criticism spanned a long career during which he earned widespread recognition and received many honors.

1} WHAT IS ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM ? WHAT DOES ARCHETYPAL CRITIC DO ?

The word archetype means , an universal pattern of thought , present in an individuals unconscious , inherited from the past collective experience of humanity. Archetypes are tools used in literature to present common aspects of human nature and life in general.Northrop Frye in his remarkable book ANATOMY OF CRITICISM , he developed the archetypal approach into a radical and comprehensive revision of traditional grounds both in the theory of literature and the practice of literary criticism.It was MAUD DODKIN's ARCHETYPAL PATTERNS IN POETRY who was given a boost and flourished the archetypal literary criticism during 1950 and 1960. Apart from him there were critics , G. WILSON KNIGHT, ROBERT GRAVES, PHILIP WHEELWRIGHT, RICHARD CAMPBELL who all emphasized the occurrence of mythical patterns in literature , on the assumption that myths are closest to the element archetype than the artful manipulation of sophisticated writers. Bodkin in his book applied Jung's theories about the collective unconscious , archetypes and primordial images to literature but Frye,s work helped displace new criticism as the major mode of analyzing literary texts.There are two basic categories in Frye's framework : COMEDIC and TRAGIC . Each category is further subdivided into two categories : COMEDY and ROMANCE for the comedic , tragedy and satire /ironic for the tragic.Frye uses the seasons in his archetypal schema. Each season is aligned with a literary genre:

COMEDY - SPRING

ROMANCE - SUMMER

TRAGEDY - AUTUMN

SATIRE - WINTER

Frye outlined five different spheres in his schema;

HUMAN :

The comedic human world is representative of wish -fulfilment and being community centered . In contrast the tragic realm human world is of isolation , tyranny and the fallen hero.

ANIMAL:

In the comedic genre animals are docile and pastoral while in tragic realm animals are predatory and hunters.

VEGETARIAN :

For the realm of vegetation the comedic is again pastoral but also represented by gardens , parks, roses and lotuses. and in tragic wild forest as being barren.

MINERAL :

Cities , temples, or precious stones represent the comedic mineral realm while the tragic mineral realm is noted for being a desert , ruins or sinister geometric images .

WATER :

Rivers represents in the comedic realm while in tragic the seas , specially floods .

ARCHETYPES DIVIDED INTO TWO CATEGORIES :

1] CHARACTERS

2] SITUATIONS / SYMBOLS

1] CHARACTERS :

👉THE HERO :

The courageous figure , the one who is always running in and saving the day . Hamlet, Charles Dickens Pip.

👉THE OUTCAST :

The out cast is just that, he or she has been cast out of society or has left it on a voluntary basis , the outcast figure can oftentimes also be considered as a christ figure.

👉 THE SCAPEGOAT :

The scapegoat figure is the one who gets blamed for everything , regardless of whether he or she is actually at fault. Monster in Victor Frankenstein.

👉THE STAR- CROSSED LOVERS :

This is the young couple joined by love but unexpectedly parted by fate. Romio and Juliet, Heer, Ranja.

👉 THE SHREW :

This is that nagging , bothersome wife always battering her husband with verbal abuse.

👉 FEMME FATALE :

A female character type who brings upon catastrophic and disastrous events. Eve from Bible.

👉 THE JOURNEY :

A narrative archetype where the protagonist must overcome a series of obstacles before reaching his or her goal .

2] SITUATIONS / SYMBOLS :

👉 THE TASK:

A situation in which a character , or a group of characters , is driven to complete some duty of monstrous proportion.

👉THE QUEST :

The characters are searching for something , whether consciously or unconsciously . Their actions, thoughts and feelings center around the goal of completing this quest.

👉THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE :

As the name suggests , loss of innocence through sexual experience , vilolence or any other means .

👉WATER :

Water is a symbol of life, cleansing and rebirth. It is a strong life force and is often depicted as a living reasoning force.

👉SUN :

Fire and ice are colsely related to it. it suggests creative energy , thinking ,enlightenment , wisdom, spiritual vision . The rising sun suggests birth, creation, enlightenment while the setting sun suggests death.

👉COLORS :

RED : Blood , sacrifice , passion, disorder .

GREEN :Growth , hope, fertility.

BLUE : Highly positive , secure , tranquil , spiritual purity.

BLACK : Darkness , chaos , mystery , the unknown death , wisdom, evil, melancholy.

WHITE : Light, purity, innocence, timelessness ; it has negative aspects also, death, terror , supernatural.

YELLOW: Enlightenment, wisdom.

👉SERPENT (SNACK / WORM ) :

Symbol of energy and pure force(libido), evil, corruption, sensuality, destruction. Serpent in Paradise Lost .

👉NUMBERS :

3. -Light, spiritual awareness , unity , male principle .

4.- Associated with circle, life circle , four seasons , earth , nature , elements. iN HINDU marriage four circles around fire ( dharma , artha , kam and moksha ).

7.- The most potent of all symbolic numbers signifying the union of three and four , the completion of a cycle , perfect order, perfect number , religious symbol.

👉WISE OLD MAN :

Savior , redeemer , guru, representing knowledge , reflection, insight, wisdom, intution and morality. ( old man in Doctor Faustus )

👉GARDEN:

Paradise , innocence , unspoiled beauty .

👉TREE :

Denotes life of the cosmos, growth, proliferation , symbol of immortality, phallic symbol.

👉DESERT:

Spiritual aridity, death, hopelessness.

👉CREATION:

All cultures believe the cosmos was brought into existence by some supernatural being or beings.

👉SEASON :

SPRING: Rebirth, genre / comedy

SUMMER : Life, genre/ romance

FALL: Death, dying , genre / tragedy

WINTER : Without life , death, genre/ irony

👉THE GREAT FISH : Divine creation /life .

👉FREUD's SYMBOLISM / ARCHETYPES :

Concave images , ponds, flowers, cups, vases, hollows, female or womb symbols.

Phallic symbols , towers, mountain peaks , snakes , knives, male symbols.

Dancing, riding, or flying symbols of sexual pleasure.

2] WHAT IS FRYE TRYING TO PROVE BY GIVING AN ANALOGY OF PHYSICS OF NATURE AND CRITICISM OF LITERATURE ?

In the very binning of his essay THE ARCHETYPES OF LITERATURE , there is a sentence , that every organized body of knowledge can be learned progressively and experience shows that there is also something progressive about the learning of literature .this sentence has got everyone into a semantic difficulty . Physics is an organized body of knowledge about nature,and a student of it says that he is learning physics not that he is learning nature. Art also like nature is the subject of a systematic study and has to be distinguished from the study itself which is criticism. It is therefor impossible to learn literature ; one learns about it in a certain way but what one learns transitively is the criticism of literature. Similarly , the difficulty often felt in teaching literature arises from the fact that it cannot be done. The criticism of literature is all that can be directly taught. So while no one expects literature itself to behave like a science, there is surely no reason why criticism as a systematic and organized study should not be at least partly a science . Perhaps but these phrases from part of a 19th century cosmology which is no longer with us. To prove his point Frye gave an analogy of physics and nature and criticism of literature. Criticism deals with the art and may well be something of an art itself but it does not follow that it must be unsystematic . It is to be related to the sciences too, it does not follow that it must be deprived of the graces of nature.we find in learned journals and scholarly monographs has every characteristics of a science . Just like scientists critics also examines evidences scientifically , previous authorities are used scientifically , fields are investigated scientifically , text are edited scientifically.

3] SHARE YOUR VIEWS OF CRITICISM AS AN ORGANISED BODY OF KNOWLEDGE . MENTION RELATION OF LITERATURE WITH HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY .

HISTORY and PHILOSOPHY are two pillars of strength for literature. All human actions are restored in history and the wisdom is recorded in philosophy . Philosophy remains mother of all things . Criticism is an art. Literature is the central division of humanities flanked on one side by history and on the other by philosophy . For the systematic mental organization of the subject the student has to turn to the conceptual framework of the historian for events and to that of the philosopher for ideas.

4] BRIEFLY EXPLAIN INDUCTIVE METHOD WITH ILLUSION OF SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET'S GRAVE DIGGER SCENE .

Inductive method leads us from observation to theory and from particular to general. It is like from particular truths in a work ,one draws forth general truths. In Shakespeare's HAMLET's grave digging scene , we have seen that gravedigger was not affected by the death of others because it is his routine work. so we came to know about that it was no big deal for the gravedigger to sing a song while digging the grave and placing different bones of the body on the ground .

5] BRIEFLY EXPLAIN DEDUCTIVE METHOD WITH REFERENCE TO ANALOGY TO MUSIC, PAINTING, RHYTHM AND PATTERN.

Deductive method leads us from theory to particular observations, from general to particular.Literature is like music and painting.Rhythm is an essential characteristics of music and painting i the painting , pattern is the chief virtue.Rhythm in music is temporal and pattern in painting is spatial. In literature both rhythm and pattern are recurrence rhythm means the narrative which presents all the events and episodes as a sequence and action. Pattern in literature signifies it's verbal structure and conveys a meaning.

6] GIVE EXAMPLES OF OUTCOME OF DEDUCTIVE METHOD .REFER TO THE INDIAN SEASONAL GRID .IF YOU CAN, READ SMALL GUJARATI OR HINDI OR ENGLISH POEM FROM THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH AND APPLY INDIAN SEASON GRID IN THE INTERPRETATION.

In this famouse gujarati song Mor, peacock Is the symbol of happiness and rain, the archetypal symbol water Water is a symbol of life, cleansing and rebirth. It is a strong life force and is often depicted as a living reasoning force.