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1. Mythological and Archetypal Approaches
2. 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.
3. Both mythological criticism and the psychological approach are concerned with the motives that underlie human behavior. Comparisons between these two approaches
4. 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.
5. Myth According 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)
6. 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
7. 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 deity.[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.
8. 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.”
9. 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
10. 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.
11. 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
12. 4. Circle: wholeness, unity
a. Mandala
b. Egg (oval)
c. Yin-Yang
d. Ouroboros
5. Serpent (snake, worm)
6. Numbers
13. 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)
14. 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
15. B. Archetypal Motifs or Patterns Creation: perhaps the most fundamental of all archetypal motifs
Immortality (cf. “To His Coy Mistress”)
a. Escape from time
b. Mystical submersion into cyclical time
16. 3. Hero archetypes
a. The quest (cf. Oedipus)
b. Initiation (cf. Huck)
c. The sacrificial scapegoat (cf. Oedipus and Hamlet)
17. 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
18. 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.”
19. 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”)
20. 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
24. 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
25. 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)
26. 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)
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. 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
30. 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
