MYTHIC AND ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM
Bruce W. Young
In their earliest incarnations, mythic and archetypal approaches go back to ancient times.
But when we refer to critical approaches that self-consciously use myth and archetype as tools
for literary understanding, we are thinking mainly of a number of twentieth-century antecedents.
These approaches show, in various ways, the influence of late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury anthropology, Jungian psychology, and in some cases the thought of Nietzsche and
Freud. Though some important mythic and archetypal criticism was done in the early twentieth
century, its great flowering was in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then the prestige of mythic and
archetypal approaches still have great popular appeal and continue to exercise fascination over
each new generation of students exposed to them. The vogue of Joseph Campbell and his
theories of myth in the 1980s is an example of this continuing appeal. Perhaps we are
experiencing a resurgence of interest in myth. This resurgence may result in part from the
growing awareness of non-Western cultures, many of which retain strong affinities with a mythic
understanding of the world.
Myth as a Cultural Phenomenon
Myths may be defined as stories, usually anonymous, accepted as true and significant by
members of a culture. Found in their purest form in ancient and primitive societies, they reflect a
pre-logical or pre-rational mode of understanding the world. According to many scholars, myth
is closely linked to ritual; myth is “the spoken part of the ritual; the story which the ritual
enacts.” Far from being false stories, myths (for cultures that accept them) are the most true of
stories, stories about the most crucial and fundamental of realities. Myths are largely stories
about origins, including the origin of the cosmos and all that it includes. They thus give meaning
to the world, to human life, and to things in the world by explaining how all of these have come
into being.
The stories themselves take place in what Mircea Eliade calls “primordial Time”—
another time, a sacred time of origins. According to Eliade, when those who believe the myths
recite or ritually re-enact them, they participate in this sacred time and gain power over the tings
whose origin they understand. Myths deal with sacred events and also with sacred beings—with
gods. They thus differ from folk tales or fairy tales, which may involve magic, but not the sacred
in its fullest sense, and which may include characters with magical powers, but not gods.
Because myth is “sacred, exemplary, significant,” it “supplies models for human behavior” and
“gives meaning and value to life.”
Anthropologists have shown that myth plays an important role in the life of a culture.
Since myth is “not merely a story told” but “ a living reality, believed to have once happened in
primeval times, and continuing ever since to influence the world and human destinies,” it serves
“to strengthen tradition and endow it with a greater value and prestige by tracing it back to a
higher, better, more supernatural reality of initial events.” Myth is thus “a hardworking,
extremely important cultural force” intimately connected with a culture’s rituals, morality,
“social organization,” and even “practical activities.”
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the prevailing view in the West, with the
possible exception of the Romantics, was that myths are false stories which project human
characteristics onto the external world. More recent thinkers have argued that mythic thinking is
richer and in some senses truer than modern scientific, objective thought. Rather than dividing
the world into subject and object, human and non-human, and trying to impose a rigid set of
rational concepts on reality (as the more sterile, incomplete modern view supposedly does), the
mythic view respects reality’s primal unity. Even if they do not accept this view of myth
wholesale, most modern literary critics are willing to acknowledge that non-rational elements—
myth, archetype, and symbol—play an important role in endowing literature with meaning and
power.
Precursors: Nietzsche and Freud
Two important precursors to the emphasis on myth in literature were Friedrich Nietzsche
and Sigmund Freud. Nietzsche argued as early as the 1870s that modern culture—the culture of
the increasingly democratic, middle-class West, with its “scientific optimism”—had lost touch
with the nourishing power of myth. “Every cultured that has lost myth,” he said, “has lost, by
the same token, its natural, healthy creativity. Only a horizon ringed about with myths can unify
a culture.” Myth, which Nietzsche called “a concentrated image of the world,” channels artistic
imagination and give a culture a “fixed and consecrated place of origin.” Modern culture, with
its practicality and rationalism, is “bent on the extermination of myth.” As a result, “Man today,
stripped of myth stands famished among all his pasts and must dig frantically for roots”; he is
deprived “of a mythic home, the mythic womb.”
Freud was too much a rationalist to take a strictly mythic approach himself, but his views
helped bring about a shift in thinking about human nature. Though his aim was largely to help
us face and control the subrational realm, what was remarkable was his acknowledgement of
how very large that realm is. For Freud, we are largely creatures of desire and imagination, not
reason. Freud’s theories have thus made it easier to view the fantastic and sometimes barbarous
world of myth and a genuine revelation of truth about human experience. Furthermore, Freud’s
work with dream symbolism helped pave the way for Jung’s theories, which were to play a more
directly influential role in mythic and archetypal criticism. Myth also plays an important role in
one of Freud’s best known theories, the “Oedipus complex.” This theory derives its name form
Freud’s view that the Oedipus myth is a key to male psychic development. Freud also felt the
myth was crucial to understanding the play Hamlet.
Besides proposing the Oedipal theory, Freud made a few other forays into the study of
myth. In “The Theme of the Three Caskets” (1913), For instance, he argued that myth arises
“under purely human conditions”—as an expression, that is, of human desires and anxieties.
Freud thus contributed to the study of myth the idea of “wish fulfillment” as a source of mythic
narrative. As he puts it in another essay, “myths … are distorted vestiges of the wish-fantasies of
whole nations—the age-long dreams of young humanity.” This is why even modern writers turn
for their materials to the “treasure-house” of myth. Freud also contributed the concept of
“displacement”: the idea that the actual content of a myth might be a distorted version of an
underlying impulse, which is transformed so as to be more acceptable or desirable.
The Beginnings of Modern Mythic Criticism
The emphasis on myth as a tool of criticism is largely due to the rise of anthropology in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The most influential work of anthropology of
this period was Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890-1915), a multi-volume work
collecting data from various cultures and showing common patterns in their stories and rituals.
Among those influenced by Frazer were a group of anthropologists who came to be known as the
“Cambridge school.” This group, which included Gilbert Murray, Jane Harrison, F. M.
Cornford, and others, argued that ritual lay at the basis of ancient Greek drama and epic and that
originally ritual and myth were closely related. Besides producing important literary analyses,
the members of the Cambridge school exerted a profound influence on creative writers,
especially during the 1910s and 1920s.
Among those influenced by the scholarly interesting myth were the great Modernist
writers—T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Thomas Mann, among others. All of these
incorporated great numbers of mythic allusions and patterns into their work. Some, like W.B.
Yeats, combined traditional sources with their own private visions to produce a kind of personal
mythology. The difficulty of reading Modernist works comes in part from the frequency and
obscurity of the allusions to myth. Two of the best-known works from these authors are Joyce’s
novel Ulysses, patterned after the Odyssey, and Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, which uses the
Grail legend and vegetation myths, along with a multitude of other literary and historical sources.
In the notes that Eliot published along with his poem, he acknowledged the influence of Jessie
Weston’s From Ritual to Romance (which deals with the Grail legend) and Frazer’s Golden
Bough. As Eliot was later to note, scholarly work of this sort, along with modern psychology,
now enabled writers to “used the mythical method” in place of conventional “narrative method.”
According to Eliot, Modernist writers were turning to this “mythical method” as a way of
responding to the problems of modern life. The use of myth, he said, “is simply a way of
responding to the problems of modern life. The use of myth, he said, “ is simply a way of
controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility
and anarchy which is contemporary history.”
Jung, Archetypes, and the Collective Unconscious
C.G. Jung gave new importance to an ancient word: archetype. The word comes from
Greek and literally means “first or chief pattern.” It could refer, for instance, to any model from
which copies are made. As used by Plato and later by Plotinus, archetype referred to principle—
sometimes called a Form or Idea—having its existence outside of this world. The things in our
world are copies or reflections (or for Plotinus, emanations) of the archetypes. The archetype
from which any individual chair in our world is copied would thus be the purely intellectual
“chair” existing in the eternal, non-material realm of the Forms.
Beginning in 1919, Carl Gustav Jung revived the word archetype and used it as part of
his theory of the: collective unconscious.” Jung, at first a disciple of Freud, differed from his
master in his view of human nature. The non-rational dimension of our being, according to Jung,
is not limited to our personal unconscious, with its various neuroses and complexes. Indeed, this
personal unconscious forms only a thin layer of our minds. The great sub-rational depth from
which our conscious minds arise is the “collective unconscious,” “a sphere of unconscious
mythology” that we share withal humanity. According to Jung, we inherit the collective
unconscious—which he also calls our “racial memory”—genetically. This “psychic system,”
“inherited in the anatomical structure of the brain,” is “collective, universal, and impersonal” and
“is identical in al individuals.” The collective unconscious is made up of “primordial images” or
“archetypes” which form “the common heritage of mankind.” These images “give form to
countless typical experiences of our ancestors. They are, so to speak, the psychic residua of
innumerable experiences of the same type,” of “joys and sorrows that have been repeated
countless times in our ancestral history.”
Though Jung describes the archetype as “a figure—be it a demon, a human being, or a
process—that constantly recurs in the course of history,” he insists that these figures or patterns
of though are not pre-existing ideas. That is, they are not ideas or images already having actual
content from the moment of our birth. Rather, they are the “inborn possibilities of ideas”; they
consist of the potential to have certain ideas or experiences. They are thus pre-existing shapes
into which any experience will fall. Among their functions is that of shaping the materials of art
and literature; they serve as “regulative principles: setting “bounds to even the boldest fantasy”
and keeping “our fantasy activity within certain categories.
According to Jung, the experience of archetypes has a distinctive character, something
akin to the experience of myth. In fact, he says, “the primordial image, or archetype,” is
essentially “a mythological figure.” The experience of a “Mythological situation”—that is, a
situation in which an archetypal shape is sensed—“is always characterized by a peculiar
emotional intensity; it is as though chord in us were struck that had never resounded before, or as
though forces whose existence we never suspected were unloosed. . . . We suddenly felt an
extraordinary sense of release, as though transported, or caught up by an overwhelming power.
At such moments we are no longer individuals, but the race; the voice of all mankind resounds in
us.” Because the endlessly repeated experiences of our ancestors have bequeathed us a psyche
structured by the archetype becomes activated and a compulsiveness appears, which, like an
instinctual drive, gains its way against all reason and will, or else”—if it is not allowed
expression—“produces a conflict of pathological dimensions, that is to say, a neurosis.”
Besides their usefulness in therapy, the concepts of the collective unconscious and the
archetypes have important implications for art and literature. The archetypal situation, whether in
life or art, “stirs us because it summons up a voice that is stronger than our own. Whoever speaks
in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthralls and over powers, while at the
same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional and the transitory into
the realm of the ever-enduring.” What leads artists to speak “in primordial images”? Jung
suggests that it is first of all an “unsatisfied” and presumably instinctive “yearning” for what
their cultures lack. In response to this yearning, artists raise from the unconscious the primordial
image “best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present.” Artists thus
help to transform their cultures by presenting in archetypal form those aspects of human life
inadequately represented in the current conscious values of their cultures. Artists thus perform a
social function, making it possible “for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life.”
Mythic and Archetypal Approaches at Mid-Century
Jung’s work soon began to influence literary criticism. An early examples of that
influence is Maud Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, published in 1934. Bodkin examined
works of literature that have had enduring power and identified as the source of this power the
presence of archetypal patterns. For example, in looking at the Rime of the ancient Mariner, she
analyzed the evocative power of colors, the images of sea and storm, and the “night-journey”
pattern of decent and deliverance.
Mythic and archetypal approaches became especially popular during the 1950s and
1960s. The most important myth-archetype critic of this period was the Canadian academic
Northrop Frye. Frye adopted ideas from earlier thinkers (Freud, Jug, and others) to develop his
own intricate view of culture and literature. This view was stated most fully in his book Anatomy
of Criticism. Frye’s views begin with the assumption that we must study with a conceptual
framework. This framework is something like the hypothesis by which a scientist explains
phenomena. In the highly structured framework for understanding literature that Frye proposes,
myth and archetype play important roles.
At times, Frye seems to use the terms myth and archetype interchangeably. Generally,
though, he associates myth with narrative or plot sequence, arguing that myth in this sense
derives from ritual. Archetypes, on the other hand, are linked with “significance,” which Frye
asserts came originally from oracular “patterns of imagery.” Frye hypothesizes the existence of
three literary “phases” in which such imagery function in different ways. In the formal phase,
images may have arbitrary or private associations (as in some kinds of allegory). In the “mythical
phase” images function as archetypes of “associative clusters”: that is , images that connect the
world of word with the world of nature. The use of these archetypes is governed by convention,
and as a result they link one work with many others and so help “to unify and integrate our
literary experience.” In a later phase (the “anagogic”), archetypes become “universal symbols”:
“images of things in common to all men” which therefore have “communicable power which is
potentially unlimited.”
Besides identifying archetypes with images or symbols, Frye also talks of archetypal
genres. According to an early essay, the archetypal genre of romance is associated with myths of
dawn, spring, and birth. Comedy, pastoral, and idyll are associated with myths of Zenith,
summer, and marriage or triumph. (Later, in his Anatomy of Criticism, Frye switched romance
and comedy, associating comedy with spring and romance with summer.) Tragedy and elegy are
associated with myths of sunset, autumn, and death. And satire is associated with myths of
darkness, winter, and dissolution. Each set of myths includes certain typical characters and
patterns and a particular vision of the world.
Frye argues that myth originated as a human attempt to take account of “nature” (the nonhuman). In this process, myth assimilates or “humanizes” nature, identifying the cycle of nature
with the cycle of human life and “outlin[ing] an entire universe in which the ‘gods’ represent the
whole of nature in humanized form.” Myth thus is limited, not by the real, but by the
conceivable, and what is conceived is the fulfillment of human desires. (Here Frye relies on
Freud’s idea of wish-fulfillment.) As a result, “the things that happen in myth are things that
happen only in stories,” not in real life; myths are part of “a self-contained literary world.” The
literature of a culture later occupies the same verbal structure established by myth. Thus,
“literature is a reconstructed mythology, with its structural principles derived from those of
myth. . . . Literature is in a complex setting what a mythology is in a simpler one: a total body
of verbal creation.” Even in modern “realistic” literature, then, the devices of plot have not been
“suggested by any observation of human life or behavior: all exist solely as story-telling devices.
Literary shape cannot come from life; it comes only from literary tradition, an so ultimately from
myth.” Content, on the other hand, may be modified to resemble “real life.” This modification
takes place through “displacement,” by which Frye means “the techniques a writer “the
techniques a writer uses to make his story credible, logically motivated or morally acceptable—
lifelike, in short.”
Frye seems, then, to have established a rather wide gap between literature and life. But
he bridges this gap by noting that myth relates to the mind and behavior of primitive peoples and
thus to anthropology, psychology, comparative religion, and sociology. Myth is thus a key to
understanding human beings. It is true that “myth criticism pulls us away from ‘life’ toward a
self-contained and autonomous literary universe. But myth . . . means many things besides
literary structure, and the world of words is not so self-contained and autonomous after all.”
The study of myth is linked to human life in many ways. Yet the job of the archetypal
critic, Frye maintains, is to view literature as a self-contained universe and to propose a structure
that accounts for that universe. Or as Frye himself puts it: “The archetypal critic studies the
poem as part of poetry, and poetry as part of the total human imitation of nature that we call
civilization.” The critic postulates “a self-contained literary universe” which “contains its own
meaning” and then views literary symbols as parts of this “whole” that literature constitutes.
The Meaning and Function of Myth and Archetype
Though Frye has been the most influential myth-archetype critic of the last few decades,
his is only one among many voices. Mythic and archetypal criticism has been practiced in a
wide variety of ways and has been based on many different assumptions. For instance, critics
differ fundamentally on exactly what archetypes and mythic patterns are and how they achieve
their effects.
As we have seen, Jung considers archetypes to be universal possibilities of ideas or
experiences that we inherit from primitive myth and ritual. If the ancient meaning of archetype
is taken literally, archetypes are the structural principles of the universe or of the human mind.
Indeed, some twentieth-century critics take something like this view: they consider archetypes to
be universal in their meaning and effect because they reflect either the eternal patterns God built
into the universe or elements found universally in the human mind or soul. Another view is that
archetypes or mythic patterns represent universal—or at least widespread and enduring—patterns
of human storytelling. Whatever view critics take of their origin, archetypes may be defined as
patterns occurring over and over in literature of various periods and places and having meaning
and power for people over many generations.
For reasons we have already examined, Jung describes myth or archetype as having an
intense emotional effect of release or transport on those who experience them. Joseph Campbell
similarly asserts that the “first function of a mythology… is to waken in the individual a sense of
awe, wonder, and participation in the inscrutable mystery of being.” Other thinkers, less
enthusiastic, attribute the effect of myth and archetype more to the significance given them by a
particular culture than to any innate power they possess.
Though C.S. Lewis doesn’t go as far as Jung or Campbell, he argues that myth has
qualities that differentiate it from other kinds of narrative or discourse and that give it certain
typical effects. For one thing, myth is neither purely abstract nor purely concrete. Unlike abstract
truth (which is only about realities), myth is a reality we experience directly. Yet it has the kind
of significance we associate with abstract truth. And so, Lewis says, “in the enjoyment of a great
myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an
abstraction…Myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast
continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it like direct experience, bound
to the particular.”
In his most extended discussion of myth, Lewis associates it with six characteristics: (1)
Myth is “extra-literary”; that is, it has “a value independent of its embodiment in any literary
work.” This value derives from its “simple narrative shape—a satisfactory and inevitable shape,
like a good vase or a tulip.” (2) “The pleasure of myth depends hardly at all on such usual
narrative attractions as suspense or surprise.” Myth is more a “permanent object of
contemplation” than a narrative aimed at keeping our attention with the standard devices of plot.
In fact, some situations or images involving little or no narrative nevertheless have a mythic
quality. (3) “Human sympathy is at a minimum.” Rather than resembling real individuals, the
characters in myth “are like shapes moving in another world.” (4) Myth “deals with impossibles
and prenaturals.” (5) “The experience may be sad or joyful but it is always grave. Comic
myth… is impossible.” (6) “The experience is not only grave but awe-inspiring. We feel is to be
numinous”-that is, to be imbued with a sense of the sacred.
Comparisons and Criticisms
One of the great strengths of mythic and archetypal criticism is that it unites many
different ways of looking at literature. Because mythic and archetypal criticism deals with
images, characters, and narrative patterns, it has affinities with formalism. Like formalism, it
can be used to analyze how literature is structured and how it achieves its effects. But unlike
some kinds of formalism, mythic and archetypal criticism takes account of a work’s author,
audience, and social milieu. In claiming to illuminate literature’s historical roots and social
function and effect, mythic and archetypal approaches have affinities with sociological and
historical criticism.
Especially where influenced by Jung, mythic and archetypal approaches also have
affinities with psychological criticism. Myth and archetype supposedly explain not only the
social function of literature, but also its effect on the individual psyche. Some critics have also
argued that criticism of this kind helps explain the ethical dimension of literature, both at the
individual and social levels.
Mythic and archetypal criticism thus has connections with many other critical
approaches, and it can claim to avoid many of their deficiencies. For instance, it is more closely
tied to the details of literary texts than historical, sociological, and moral approaches sometimes
are. And though, like formalism, mythic and archetypal criticism deals with textual details, it
may be better than some kinds of formalism at explaining the effect of these details and their
social significance.
But mythic and archetypal criticism has deficiencies of its own. Mythic and archetypal
critics have been most often criticized for reading meanings (sometimes outlandish ones) into the
details of a text and neglecting more plausible historical or formal explanations for these details.
At its worst, mythic and archetypal criticism has degenerated into a process of looking images
and patterns up in a handbook of symbols. Details are thus taken out of context and interpreted
as if they could be matched in a mechanical way with a list of “meanings.”
Furthermore, many feel that certain mythic or archetypal approaches are based on shaky
assumptions. Jung’s views in particular have been emotionally powerful, not because they
actually put us in contact with universal and primordial realities, but because they present the
idea of repeating “what our prehistoric ancestors did” is exciting or impressive.”
Another criticism is that the general view of history an culture proposed by mythic
criticism is an oversimplification, a romanticizing of past and the primitive. Historians have
shown that most cultures combine past and the primitive. Historians have shown that most
cultures combine mythic and rational ways of thinking, rather than clinging tone or the other, and
that the movement from primitive to sophisticated ways of viewing the world has not been nearly
as simple and unidirectional as myth critics sometimes suppose. The distinction between mythic
and rational thinking is nevertheless useful and has helped correct the overemphasis on reason in
eighteenth-and nineteenth-century literary criticism.
Because structuralism criticism resembles the myth-archetype approach, some find it
hard to distinguish them. But the two approaches have cultural differences. For instance, almost
practitioners of mythic and archetypal approaches see myth and archetype as having within
themselves profound meaning and emotional effect. Structuralists see them functioning, instead
as elements in a cultural system of signs and as having meaning only in relation to other
elements. (On the issue, Frye in closer to the structuralist view.) Claude Levi-Strauss, the
founder of structuralist anthropology, specifically criticizes Jung’s view “that a given
mythological pattern . . . possesses a certain meaning.” Rather, Levi-Strauss says, “if there is a
meaning to be found in mythology, it cannot reside in the isolated elements which enter into the
composition of a myth, but only in the way those elements are combined, “ them elements
themselves (which Levi-Strauss calls “mythemes”) are arbitrary; it is how they are arranged, in
patterns of repetition and contrast, that conveys meaning, Structuralism thus acknowledges the
existence of mythic thinking, but claims to examine it in a more rigorously scientific way then
other approaches do.
Departing from the ethically or politically neutral stance of structuralism, some recent
thinkers have emphasized the limitations and dangers of mythic thinking. Some versions of
poststrucutalism and new historicism argue that dominant ways of thinking in a culture—and
these would include myths—function to “mystify” the structures of power and persuade people
that these structures are “right” or “natural.”
René Girard, a French thinker sometimes labeled a poststructuralist, has developed an
elaborate view, named on anthropological and literary evidence, that myth has been used
throughout history to disguise and justify acts of collective violence. The Oedipus myth, for
instance, bears the traces of the scapegoating and persecution with which ancient communities
tended to respond to calamities such as plagues, When such calamities struck, someone—often a
stranger or a successful immigrant like Oedipus, or sometimes a whole group—would be blamed
and killed or banished, The Oedipus myth attempts to justify such acts by shoeing that the
scapegoat really was blameworthy—Oedipus had committed unspeakable crimes—and that the
gods willed and brought about the scapegoat’s punishment, just as they brought about the
calamity itself, Girard contrasts this mythic kind of narrative with biblical stories, like that of
Joseph, who was persecuted by hid brothers and sold into Egypt, that resemble the myths in most
important respects except one—the persecution is shown to be unjust.
Girard argues that myth continues to serve as a tool for scapegoating in the modern
world, The nazi persecution of the Hews, for instance, depended on the creation of myths. Girard
also identifies aspects of Freud’s work as “mythic.” He calls the Oedipus complex a modern
myth that functions to scapegoat young boys. It does so by identifying them as the source of
libidinous and murderous impulse, when in fact such impulses, if they exist, are learned by
imitation from the older generation. According to Girard, the invitation to rivalry between father
and son comes from the father himself.
Another contemporary thinker who points to the limitations of the mythic view is the
philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. He argues that the mythic view arises from our anxiety before
“the elements.” By “the elements” he means those aspects of the natural world that surround us
and on which our life depends—the air, the sky, the sea, the earth, and so on. Because we cannot
“grasp” the elemental world, wither practically or perceptually, it seems to come from an
unknown depth, as if from nowhere. And it seems constantly to be returning to that same depth,
The elemental world is thus both ungraspable and uncertain.
We respond to the elemental world as if it were ruled by “faceless gods,” mysterious and
impersonal divine beings who are violent and unpredictable. Before these gods, we feel forced to
bow, and we are tempted to lose our identity by merging with this anonymous and “sacred”
realm. We are also tempted to participate in the violence of the sacred—a violence that may be
either physical (as in some rituals) or mental (as in some forms of mysticism). For Levinas, our
growth into full ethical responsibility requires a kind of “atheism”—a rupture of our devotion to
and fear of these faceless gods. Only by maintaining our separation from these gods—and from
the kind of “otherness” that invites our loss of identity—can we establish a free and responsible
relation with the true God and with other human beings.
There is doubtless something to the sorts of criticisms Girard and Levinas make. Jung,
too, acknowledged the destructive role myth and archetype can play, a role they clearly played in
the twentieth-century Fascism. Yet these criticisms touch on only one side of myth. Between the
view that myth is a necessary source of cultural nourishment and the view that it is a tool for
justifying persecution and violence, there is a third view: namely, that myth is something
valuable and perhaps necessary, something we may never be able to fully grow out of or discard,
though we may need to “demystify” it and hold it up to ethical questioning.
Reading and Writing
The different theories of myth and archetype offer a rich variety of angles from which to
look at a literary text as you read or write about it. For the sake of convenience, four typical
approaches are suggested here: identifying allusions, comparing literary works, doing a Jungian
analysis, and tracing archetypal or mythical patterns.
Especially beginning in the Renaissance, Western literature has achieved many of its
effects by referring to mythology of the past, especially Greek and Roman mythology. Such
references—called allusions—are often brief and are made with the assumption that readers
already know the fuller stories or situations only implied by the references. As you read a work
with mythological allusions, you could note the stories and characters alluded to and look them
up in a handbook on mythology. You could ask, Why did the author make these references?
What ideas do they convey? What pattern do they set up? What effects do they create? For
example, when you read Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much with Us,” you could note the
references to Proteus and Triton and ask what these references accomplish. Do they suggest a
particular view of the natural world? Do they help set up a contrast between the modern world
and the ancient world? Do they make the poem more vivid?
When compared to poetry from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century, modern
poetry is often much less straightforward in its use of myth. For instance, “The Second Coming”
by W.B. Yeats refers to the Christian ideas of the birth of Christ and the second coming (which
may be called “myths” in the broad sense). But especially as it ends, the poem shocks us by
overturning the positive expectations these ideas are likely to set up in our minds. Contemporary
literature had opened up whole new fields of mythic allusion: the myths of non-Western cultures
and modern “myths” (note, for instance, the references to Nazism and other aspects of twentiethcentury history in Sylvia Plath’s poems).
A second way to use myth and archetype in literary writing is to compare two or more
works of literature that are parallel in some respect. For instance, you could compare Joyce’s
Ulysses and Homer’s Odyssey. In writing a paper, you might do well to select a particular section
or aspect of the two works to compare. Of course, the similarities between two works you
compare may or may not have been intentional. For instance, though it is not clear whether
Shakespeare had the Oresteian trilogy of Aeschylus in mind when he wrote Hamlet, comparing
the two may nevertheless produce interesting results.
A third approach involves using the ideas of C.G. Jung to identify specific archetypes and
relating these to the psychic and social functions Jung ascribes to them. Among the archetypes
Jung discusses are the animus and anima, the shadow, the trickster, and the terrible mother.
Identifying plausible examples of these and other archetypes in a work can by wonderfully
illuminating. To see a character as a shadow or anima figure, for instance, can explain aspects of
plot or relationships between characters that might otherwise be baffling. And even if it is not
clear that a character fits an archetype exactly, seeing the character through a Jungian lens can
show some things about the character that might have been invisible before. A Jungian approach
can also explain ambiguities in our response to a character. Milton’s Eve in Paradise Lost, for
example, arguably partakes of both the good and terrible mother archetypes. These archetypes
may help explain the text’s ambivalent combination of positive and negative traits ascribed to
Eve and to her actions. Of course, to use the Jungian approach well, you have to read Jung
carefully enough to understand his ideas accurately.
A fourth approach is to trace an archetypal or mythic pattern through a work. You might
consider the patterns suggested by Jung, Frye, Campbell, or others, or you might come up with
one of your own if you think you can argue that it is genuinely archetypal. Any of the previous
three approaches might be used in combinations with this one. For instance, mythological
allusions might give us clues as to an important pattern in a work; an intentional parallel between
two works might perform the same function. In fact, when you write a paper tracing a pattern
through a work, referring to other works in which the same pattern occurs is an effective way of
demonstrating the universality of the pattern and of helping certain aspects of the work you are
examining to stand out.
One of the best ways to identify an archetypal pattern in a text is to watch for allusions.
In Frank O’Connor’s story “First Confession,” the narrator describes his descent into the city in
this way: “I remember that steep hill down to the church, and the sunlit hillsides beyond the
valley of the river, which I saw in the gaps between the housed like Adam’s last glimpse of
Paradise.” Could this be a hint that we are to see the story as a kind of fall from innocence? In
Heart of Darkness, Conrad makes specific allusions to Dante’s Inferno. Do these, along with
imagery reminiscent of other journeys into hell (in Homer, Virgil, and Milton), help make
Conrad’s book an example of the “descent into the underworld” archetype?
Many other approaches are possible besides those I have described. And whatever
approach you take, you might have any one of several possible aims. For instance, you could
examine the appeal of a work or analyze the particular kind of effect it achieves. You could
argue that certain elements in a work have the kind of effect that Jung associates with archetypes
of the Lewis associates with myth. Or you might show how archetypes or mythic patterns
convey certain ideas or values. You might argue that myths and archetypes affect us at a deeper
and less conscious level than some other devices, or you might argue that they serve as a kind of
allusive shorthand to connect a work to a whole culture or set of values. You could also show
how myth and archetype function as aspects of a work’s formal structure: for instance, how they
contribute to character development of the unfolding of plot. If you are ambitious enough, you
might want to explore the social and cultural functions of myth with reference to a particular
work. Or you might follow the lead of Northrop Frye in showing how a particular work fits into
the “imaginative universe” of literature as a whole.
Another question to examine is why an author used myth or archetype in particular
works. For example, myth is an important element in the fiction of C.S. Lewis. His science
fiction book Perelandra is essentially a Garden of Eden story. The Magician’s Nephew, from his
Chronicles of Narnia, is a version of the creation, garden, and fall myths. And The Lion, the
Witch, and the Wardrobe transforms the Christian story of death, resurrection and redemption
into a fantasy tale. Why did he choose these modes for conveying his convictions about human
experience? Close examination of the works, supplemented by speculation, can yield some
answers. Lewis’s essays and letters also provide evidence for what he hoped to achieve. Of
course, our conclusions must be tested against the works themselves.
Mythic and archetypal approaches can help you recognize ways of communication ideas
and rendering human experience other than the purely logical or descriptive. But as you use
these approaches, you should be careful not to read more into the details of a work than you can
make a reasonable case for. One of the greatest dangers of mythic and archetypal approaches is
that they can become too formulaic. Some readers and writers become convinced that there is a
key of equivalents somewhere telling us what every image or pattern means. Since these images
and patterns are not “detachable parts of the works in which they appear,” it is important to look
at them in context. Authors think or see in terms of images and mythic patters, and so we need to
attend to their way of thinking and seeing rather than simply extract details and look at these out
of context.