Literary Archetypes
Literary archetypes are recurring symbols, characters, themes, or motifs that embody universal patterns and traits across different cultures and time periods. They serve as fundamental building blocks in storytelling, representing common human experiences and emotions. By tapping into these archetypes, writers can create relatable and resonant narratives that transcend specific cultural or historical contexts.
8 Key excerpts on "Literary Archetypes"
eBook - ePub- Jane Garry, Hasan El-Shamy(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Some of the chief archetypes with which Jung is concerned are “the shadow, the wise old man, the child (including the child hero), the mother … and her counterpart the maiden, and lastly the anima in man and the animus in woman” (Jung 1969, 4). Additional archetypes identified by Jung include the trickster and the hero. Maud Bodkin, one of the first scholars to apply Jung’s ideas to literature, rejects the notion that archetypes are “stamped upon the physical organism” or “inherited in the structure of the brain,” but interprets them instead as persistent cultural symbols that are passed down through generations via folklore and literature. She states, “I shall use the term ‘archetypal pattern’ to refer to that within us which, in Gilbert Murray’s phrase, ‘leaps in response’ to the effective presentation… of an ancient theme” (Bodkin 1934, 4). The critic Northrup Frye did much to apply Jung’s ideas of the archetype to literature, although he dissociated the concept of the archetype from depth psychology. Numerous scholars—including James Hillman, Bettina Knapp, and Martin Bickman—have worked with archetypes, with varying degrees of emphasis on the original psychological nature of Jung’s work. In 1997, Carol Rupprecht pronounced archetypal theory “a fledgling and much misconstrued field of inquiry with significant but still unrealized potential for the study of literature and of aesthetics in general” (122). Similarly, mythological theory retains a powerful appeal. Cross-Cultural Studies of Motifs In studying the distributions of motifs, one finds that the same object in different cultures may hold vastly different meanings. For example, snakes are found in the mythology and folktales of many cultures...
eBook - ePubJungian Theory for Storytellers
A Toolkit
- Helena Bassil-Morozow(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It presents it to you in the form of an archetypal narrative, constructing a detailed visual-narrative canvas out of the range of universal details – archetypal images, situations, attitudes and actions. Everyday life can be a struggle, and it helps to see it as an externalized ‘heroic’ narrative, as a symbolic story in which making up with an oppressive parent is presented as slaying a dragon, and spring-cleaning the house as cleaning the Augean stables. Everyone is a hero with a reserve of superhuman power, fighting through life’s ups and downs. p.33 Jung calls the hero ‘the finest of all symbols of the libido’ because of its exceptional clarity and transparency, with which it transforms from the blob of psychic energy that is the pure archetype into an archetypal image: Here the symbolism leaves the objective, material realm of astral and meteorological images and takes on human form, changing into a figure who passes from joy to sorrow, from sorrow to joy, like the sun, now stands high at the zenith and now is plunged into darkest night, only to rise again in new splendor. (CW 5: para. 251) Not surprisingly, there is an abundance of superheroes and heroines in contemporary mythology – comic books, television and Hollywood cinema. Men and women with superpowers – Batman, Superman, Spider Man, Wonder Woman and Catwoman – battle with the personal and social issues plaguing the individual today, from urban crime and pollution to loneliness and loss of community. These contemporary manifestations of the hero archetype will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. The trickster The trickster is probably the most intriguing archetype. It has attracted serious attention from specialists outside the field of Analytical Psychology: sociologists, anthropologists and folklorists...
eBook - ePubEncounters With Archetypes
Integrated ELA Lessons for Gifted and Advanced Learners in Grades 4-5
- Tamra Stambaugh, Emily Mofield, Eric Fecht, Kim Knauss(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Lesson 7 Novel Study: Encounters With Archetypes DOI: 10.4324/9781003234890-10 Key Question How do encounters with literature and archetypes allow for reflection and change? Objectives Content: To analyze and interpret fiction, nonfiction, and art, students will be able to: ■ compare and contrast how literary, visual, informational, and/or primary source texts reveal patterns and themes; ■ analyze characters' conflicts, motives, values, thoughts, and actions; ■ compare and contrast the use of specific techniques various authors use to approach and develop similar ideas; ■ identify and analyze archetypal patterns in stories, speeches, and real-world contexts and discuss how they are shaped by the author or real-world individuals or events; and ■ analyze how multiple literary elements interact over the course of the text to develop the theme. Process: To develop interpretation, analysis, and communication skills in the language arts, students will be able to: ■ justify inferences with evidence from the text; ■ elaborate in discussion or in writing on how authors use language and literary elements to create meaning; ■ apply evidence to support explanations and opinions relative to a question, text, or issue; and ■ respond to an analysis of literature, nonaction, media, or art by developing arguments and elaborating on explanations through writing a variety of texts (e.g., essays, paragraphs), including relevant and sufficient evidence to support...
eBook - ePubC. G. Jung
The Basics
- Ruth Williams(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...3 Archetypes I will begin by setting out the Jungian definition of archetype. Then I will lightly touch on a few examples with which you will be familiar (although you may not have thought of them in this way), before including some archetypal themes which may not be so immediately obvious, such as number, slavery, love, war, home, sacrifice and meaning. Definition Archetype is a precise, technical term in Jungian speech which Jung first coined in 1919 in “Instinct and the Unconscious” (CW8 par. 270). Originally Jung had used the term ‘primordial image’ until he recognised that the manifestations of universal motifs were not limited to images but also arose as ideas, feelings, experiences and characteristic patterns of behaviour (Stevens 2006 p.76). Archetypes are not to be confused with stereotypes. In everyday speech, the meanings are sometimes conflated. A stereotype is used to describe a hackneyed, trite or oversimplified idea/person. Archetypes can be construed as: • significant events (such as birth, death, falling in love, marriage, war) • characters (Mother, Father, Hero, Wise Old Man/Woman etc) • symbols (heart, crucifix, mandalas), and motifs (adolescence, midlife crisis, heartbreak, abandonment, transcendence) Archetypes are not simply intellectual concepts but are imbued with feeling, which gives them their power to affect us in a most visceral fashion. You know when you are gripped by an archetype, such as falling in love. Or when you are possessed by the ‘witch’; or the ‘hero’. They have characteristics with which we may be familiar and encountering them in their archetypal form increases their impact significantly because archetypes are numinous (which means they are possessed of a spiritual quality/energy which increases their force and may be felt as overwhelming). The word ‘archetype’ comes from two Greek words which translate as ‘first pattern’ or prototype...
eBook - ePubTranspersonal Dynamics
The Relational Field, Depth Work and the Unconscious
- Stacey Millichamp(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Kaminn Media Ltd(Publisher)
...Symbolizing the nature of the journey in specific ways helps us as therapists to perceive the way in which apparently unrelated content is in fact connected. It also supports us at moments when we can feel very stuck, unable to understand why a client is circulating around and around an issue, with no apparent way to break more deeply into what is perplexing them. This way of working also reminds us as practitioners that the power of a client’s personal mythology is far larger and more profound than we will ever fully understand. Clients will often report that being related to in this way brings a special sense of feeling deeply ‘known’ and understood by their therapist, as clinical concepts are replaced with words and images that they can relate to, freeing them to experience themselves as part of something meaningful and significant. Making your own list of archetypes and stories/fairy tales/folk tales/legends/fables I have had many students and practitioners come to me after trainings to say that they do not know many fairy tales or fables, and that they are afraid that this will limit their capacity to work with archetypes and mythology. It is important to point out that it is not necessary to be an expert in ancient mythology or to have read lots of books on archetypes in order to work with this material. We all have stories and narratives that we picked up as children from storybooks, films, or television series, many of which are peopled with versions of archetypes that are relevant to the world that we live in today. Even well-known people in the media can represent archetypes if we start asking which qualities and ways of being those people have that we look up to, admire or dislike. If you wish to explore further there is a bibliography at the end of this book that suggests some reading material. If this material feels alien or too ‘out there’ for your practice, I encourage you to begin to give it a try and listen to the feedback that your clients give you...
eBook - ePubJungian Literary Criticism
The Essential Guide
- Susan Rowland(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...And yet, Frye’s criticism addresses human and historical issues of myth, ritual, and the kinds of experience found in religion that are also embedded in what today is called literature. A Jungian literary criticism here would be a way for ideas from outside the text to contribute to literary understanding. Such a criticism might learn from Frye to explore what is similar and connecting of cultures, in ritual, symbol and myth, as well as what divides them. Key definitions Archetype and archetypal image Archetypes are inherited potential patterns in the psyche that in-form, are form-making for psychological meaning. They are psychosomatic, linking body and mind, instinct and image. Archetypes creatively manifest the aims of bodily instincts without being determined by them. Body and psyche are interactive domains that do not control each other. The independent archetypes mediate the relationship of body and psyche. Archetypes are knowable to the conscious ego through the archetypal image, a partial representation of the infinite variety of the archetype that is also influenced by surrounding cultural conditions. In their limitless possibilities, archetypes are androgynous, pan-sexual, and capable of protean adaptability to any system of representation, any religion or ethos. Self Jung theorised a supreme organising archetype that he named the self to signify its importance in generating being beyond consciousness. Sometimes occurring as an organising principle within the psyche, the self could also stand for the whole extent of psychic being with unknowable boundaries. While Jung’s prioritising of the self suggests an inherent monotheism in his psychology, it is modified by also recognising a multiplicity of archetypes operating in psychic life, as well as the need for plurality in psychic imagery. Jung linked the self to the God of Christianity, or to Jesus, in that religious iconography should function as self-images, an archetypal image...
eBook - ePubThe Symbolic Quest
Basic Concepts of Analytical Psychology - Expanded Edition
- Edward C. Whitmont(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
...5. Archetypes and Myths I N ORDER TO effect a constructive and lasting change in our lives we must strive toward a transformation of the potentially disturbing or disruptive complexes by reaching their archetypal cores. Such a transformation can occur only when we have gone beyond the personal dimension to the universal. This process is sustained by guidance from the objective psyche through dreams and fantasies. The archetypal core can best be described in terms of its dynamic and formal aspects. The dynamic aspect refers to energy, to expression per se —actions, reactions, patterns of emotion and behavior—which are brought into play through the forms of the personal shell of the complex. The formal aspect involves percepts—representational experiences—usually in the shape of dream or fantasy images, but sometimes in the form of auditory experiences and occasionally of experiences of one of the other senses. All of these manifestations can be seen to correspond to mythological motifs. Thus the nuclear core of a complex characteristically presents itself in the form of mythological representations and images, such as the horned power and the renewing pool of water referred to in the preceding chapters. We call these images mythological because we are familiar with them through their appearance in myths, stories, fairy tales and traditional religious forms of all ages, locales and epochs, and we refer to these recurring motifs as mythologems. They occur in the dreams and fantasies of contemporary men, and do so under three types of circumstances: (1) Mythologems appear in the analytic situation when complexes have been understood and dealt with but when a step beyond the understanding of their personal genesis is required...
eBook - ePubA Jungian Approach to Engaging Our Creative Nature
Imagining the Source of Our Creativity
- Robert Sandford(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...These stories hold creativity in its most potent, distilled, archetypal form. They function as founding myths for creativity itself—stories that give symbolic form and cosmic context to what is essential to our nature and our creative acts. They offer a measure of clarity charged with the dynamism of mystery. In the telling and the hearing we recall and awaken our creative heritage which, as Adriá suggests, begins with creation of the universe. Creation stories serve as a “paradigmatic model for every creation” (Eliade, 1959, p. 81), not so much in the sense of a rational construct or procedure but more as an imaginal awakening accessible through reenactment. The metaphor of older, deeper layers as an originating source roots the creative act and its fruits in an ancient past. In creating we connect with our ancestors and even our cosmic beginnings. In the fantasy of a mythical past, creativity is a participation in and ritual enactment of the creative energies of the collective unconscious, the ancestral repository. Whether archetypes are literally a form of collective memory is here less important than the fascination, the grip the idea exerts on the imagination and on our attempts to imagine creativity. The idea of archetypes imagines the core of the psyche as a sort of mythic memory. To create we must know in our bones creativity as a heritage and a necessity. Archetypes as mythic memory invite us to imagine the act of attending that nascent, intuitive knowledge as recalling and claiming our common ancestral birthright. To the mythic mindset (another way of characterizing the symbolic attitude), a tale of origins is an invitation to participate in the mysterious, originating, creative energy embodied therein. The story (like the archetype) becomes an existential paradigm accessed and incarnated through fantasy, imagination, engaged imitation and enactment. Even stories of origins told as if they were literal accounts of ‘actual’ events function mythically...
