ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM - Northrop Frye

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ARCHETYPAL

CRITICISM

                                      This blog post is made on the grounds of a classroom task assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir on one of the units of Literary Theory and Criticism paper that is ‘Archetypal Criticism’ – by Northrop Frye. The task was to answer some of the questions and reflect our understanding of the theory as well as to apply it in any of the poems. Frye’s essay was published in his most important work called ‘Anatomy of Criticism’.

Question- What is Archetypal Criticism? What does the archetypal critic do?

                              Simply, Archetypal criticism is a body of critical interpretations which highlights the images, symbols, and ideas according to the preconceived patterns of ideas or is shaped by cultural and psychological myths. An archetype is a symbolic or consistent representation of a human or a thing considered from a common as well as universal patterns.

 According to M H Abrams,

“In Literary criticism, the term archetype denotes narrative designs, patterns of actions, character types, themes, and images that recur in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even social rituals.”

                                               Well, Northrop Frye in his work, “The Anatomy of Criticism” justifies the archetypal criticism in an essay called “The Archetypes of Literature”. He tries to provide a skeleton of literature. There is a possibility that the archetypes that he suggests opens up the new investigation of any literary work. By observing that every story has the beginning, the middle and the end, Frye suggests that the law of Nature works uniformly. And with the law of Nature, Literature can also have a certain pattern where the ideas, characters, concepts, environment works symbolically with nature. Frye suggests ‘Mythos Grid’.

Source- Archetypal Criticism

This framework has its categorical significance-

                                       So this Category is compared with the cycle of Nature where each season has its significance which acts as a symbol in the protagonist’s life and this way the readers can identify or can relate with the upcoming event/ incident or situation. Spring suggests comedy as it is an archetype of a well beginning. During Spring, new leaves grow on the branches of a tree. 

                                          As it can be observed in the following chart that Spring is believed to be the season of joyfulness and it can be assumed that the arrival of the season is the arrival of a newborn. Similarly, winter is the season which is commonly known for its frozenness and isolation and perhaps this is why it brings death and depression.

                            This way, with the help of this skeleton, archetypal critics evaluate a work of art and interpret it with various assumptions. The traditional literature fits perfectly in this skeleton but the issue is with the post-modern works like ‘Waiting for Godot’. The play ‘Waiting for Godot’ is a tragic comedy where its genre tragedy and satire become difficult to connect with the two seasons.

                                            

                                 But, the illustration of the text called ‘The Bluest Eye’ by Toni Morrison seems to some extent is relatable with the theory of Frye. The Bluest Eye starts with a symbolic season which introduces the readers to the psychologically fractured family ironically named Breedlove. Morrison also reverses the traditional symbolism of each season but some events occur with the change in season.

Question. What is Frye trying to prove by giving an analogy of 'Physics to Nature' and 'Criticism to Literature'?

                                         Frye seems to be trying to compare an analogy of 'Physics to Nature' and 'Criticism of Literature'. He explains this with a far scientific view. Just as Physics is the study of nature, criticism is the study of literature. He observes-

“Every organized body of knowledge can be learned progressively; and experience shows that there is also something progressive about the learning of literature. Our opening sentence has already got us 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, like nature, is the subject of a systematic study and has to be distinguished from the study itself, which is criticism. It is therefore impossible to “learn literature”: one learns about it in a certain way, but what one learns, transitively, is the criticism of literature.”

                                       So, this is an analogy where it seems rather impossible to study literature as a whole but the substitution of the word ‘criticism’ with ‘literature’ it becomes convincingly true that we can study the criticism of literature. But criticism is an individual branch of knowledge. The major thing to be observed here is Criticism deals with the arts and may well be something of an art itself, but it does not follow that it must be unsystematic. If it is to be related to the sciences too, it does not follow that it must be deprived of the graces of culture.

Question. Share your views of Criticism as an organized body of knowledge. Mention the relation of literature with history and philosophy.

                                     Frye says that knowledge is learned progressively and so literature can also be learned in a similar way. The development of thoughts occurs in the same pattern but the approach is different which arouses semantic difficulty. 

                                         All human actions are recorded in history and all knowledge/ wisdom is recorded in criticism. Therefore, we can say that literature unwinds the cultural condition of society.

Question. Briefly explain inductive method with the illustration of Shakespeare's Hamlet's Grave Digger's scene.

Frye suggested two methods of structural analysis of data

Inductive method

Deductive method

                               The inductive method is a process of investigation from ‘observation to theory’. It begins from a particular or specific observation and progresses to announce a more general theory.

                                      Readers or the audience gets to know about the general truth of life from a particular incident or episode.

“This inductive movement towards the archetype is a process of backing up, as it were, from structural analysis, as we back up from a painting if we want to see composition instead of brushwork.”

                                 Frye explains his statement with one illustration from Shakespeare’s finest tragedy “Hamlet”. He provides a stage-wise understanding of the scene where he says-

“At each stage of understanding this scene we are dependent on a certain kind of scholarly organization.”

                                  The close observation of the scene would reveal it to be a very complicated structure of verbs as Frye in his language calls ‘intricate verbal structure’. It generates the same complication as a close look at the painting generates. While looking at a painting very minutely, one would only be able to see the canvas and the strings of canvas and not the whole painting. In a similar way, the inductive method analysis the close fragments of the text to give more general assumptions. Frye says the scene is filled with the puns of the first clown and the reflection of the danse macabre in the Yorick soliloquy of Hamlet.

                                       A step back would reveal the hero Hamlet as a ‘Liebestod’ hero, sacrificing himself for his beloved.

Question. Briefly explain the deductive method with reference to an analogy to Music, Painting, rhythm, and pattern. Give examples of the outcome of the deductive method.

                                          The deductive method progresses from general theory to a particular observation.

                                           It is described in the third part of the essay where Frye lists some examples of music and painting – the arts which move in time and space. In both the art forms the organizing principle is recurrence. All forms of art can be conceived either temporally or spatially.  

Literature is an intermediate between music and painting.

                                           Basically, the deductive method provides us the method which can be applied to the works of art in order to interpret it. The rhythm of literature is narrative and the pattern of literature is a pictorial image of literature.

                                 Rhythm can be easily observed in the natural cycle. According to Frye, everything in nature that we think of as having some analogy with works of art, like the flower or the bird’s song, grows out of a profound synchronization between an organism and the rhythms of its environment, especially that of the solar year. Frye says that the mating dances of birds can be called rituals as well as the harvest festival. 

                                                 

                                    Pattern in literature can provide a symbolic representation of text that is a kind of image or pictorial view of the narration.

Question. Refer to the Indian seasonal grid (below). If you can, please read small Gujarati or Hindi or English poem from the archetypal approach and apply Indian seasonal grid in the interpretation.

I have tried to read a poem of Robert Burns with the reference of the Indian seasonal grid.

Here is the photo of Indian seasonal grid

Well, I have tried to interpret “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns from the archetypal approach. Here is the text-

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

   That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

   That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

   So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

   Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

I will love thee still, my dear,

   While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!

   And fare thee weel awhile!

And I will come again, my luve,

   Though it were ten thousand mile.

The title ‘Red Rose’ of the poem provides a sense of a symbol. It acts as a symbol of love. Rose itself has a very representation of an emotion. And to understand this archetypal signature of rose, it is necessary to suspect the thing called rose with its color. Every color also has a symbolic significance pertaining to its culture and social context. 

The season of summer is taken as a reference. It is a very comfortable season and for the people of England but The same season with reference to the Indian cycle grid gives an unpleasant feeling. The soothing rays of the sun become the unbearable rays of the hot climate. 

  My luve is like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June.

This is the only mention of roses; the rest of this sixteen line poem is made up of other images, all of them commonplace long before Burns' time.  And even these two lines seem imprecise, and the information of the second is spread rather thinly.  Considering the general tone of modern criticism, with its emphasis on the innovative, the intellectual, the precise, it is surprising that such a poem has retained so much of its esteem and is still widely anthologized.  We are informed that a woman is like "a red, red rose," a newly sprung June one, but not told how.  One could well imagine a 20th century New Critic demanding that the poet justify and clarify his simile before going on to others, especially since it is self-evident that women and roses are in many respects quite unlike each other.  Apparently, most readers, even critical ones, accept the proposition that a woman, at least a woman that one is in love with, is like a rose as self-validating.

References

M H Abrams. A Dictionary of Literary terms

The_Rose_Archetype, meadhall.homestead.com/The_Rose_Archetype.html.

Philip Wheelwright, Metaphor and Reality (Bloomington:  Univ. of Indiana Press, 1962), p. 161.