from Greek arkhetupos, original: arche (beginning, origin) + tupos (type) =

model, stamp

• collective forms of intuitions• Unconscious• Typical, shared images across

human experience

Personal Unconscious• Belongs to one alone• Repressed infantile wishes and

experiences• Subliminal perceptions • memories

DIFFERENT FROM

• collective unconscious• each individual's psyche shares certain characteristics• mind goes beyond individualtheory of archetypes• a figure that repeats itself in the course of history• formulated of countless experiences of our ancestors

• Literary Criticism• explores human psyche • collective rather than the individual

• Archetypal Criticism• emphasizes repetitive patterns in man’s life • revealed in literature• some of which are embodied in myths• draws heavily on the non-literary field • focuses on man’s historical and prehistoric past

Jung believed that the creative process consists mainly of successive embodiments of the archetypes, of fashioning primordial images “into the language of the present which makes it possible for every man to find again the deepest springs of life which would otherwise be closed to him.”

• Call:Our hero is an everyday person exposed to an opportunity to leave their world and explore other worlds. The adventure may be introduced by a Herald. If the hero accepts the call right away they might be provided with supernatural powers that will help them fight.

• Allies: These are the people that surround the hero and help prepare him and/ or support him on his journey.

• Preparation:Our hero prepares for the journey bringing along the tools that he/she feels will aid him/her during his/her journey.

• Threshold:This is the gate to the unknown world. Often depicted by darkness, strangeness and danger. The hero must fight the threshold guardians and win in order to cross the threshold.

Trials:This is the action adventure section of the story. The hero faces all kinds of tests and trials. The hero is aided by supernatural help, amulets, powers and allies.

Saving Experience:The hero survives the most intense adventure of the story, finds his/her life free from the dangers of the journey, and obtains the treasure. Sometimes the treasure is a damsel in distress, a ring that holds powers or other objects that the ordinary world needs.

Transformation:After the struggle against physical or symbolic death, the hero must rise from the situation stronger and wiser.

The Return:The hero must return to his ordinary world to see that his world is made better. In some cases the hero will continue to live in his ordinary world and also return to his hero’s world as well.

Sharing the Gift:The gift received or the lessons learned from the journey are shared with others to give them insight that the hero learned, reflecting the new wisdom of the hero.

The Archetypal Hero: The Archetypal Hero goes on a physical or emotional journey. While on that journey, he or she overcomes obstacles. Once he reaches the end of the journey, he or she will change. The change can be physical or emotional. The struggle or quest symbolizes the merging or balancing of the ego and Self. There are different types of heroic journeys that are listed on the following page.

Persona: Over time, man develops a mask or stance. it is what one thinks society expects of him. The way one presents himself to the world is a result of this persona. The persona reflects the characteristic roles we individually adopt in relating to others

Ego: The ego is the part of the personality that one consciously recognizes as “I” or “me”. It is developed after birth. The ego should always remain in balance with the Self.

Shadow: The aspect of the Self (see definition below) which remains unconscious because it is repressed by the ego. The shadow is the darker side of the personality. Never will it be shown consciously. The shadow should never be out of balance with the ego or persona.

•Anima: The Anima is the feminine side of the personality. It is nurturing, loving, emotional, sensitive and vulnerable. There should be a balance between the Anima and Animus.

•animus: The Animus is the masculine side of the personality. It is aggressive, dominating, determined, cool thinking and sound in judgment. There should be a balance between the Anima and Animus.

•Self: The Self is the psychic center of man. The entire archetypal system of the unconscious, the heart of the personality, and man’s ego make up the Self. Jung defines, “the Self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of the conscious mind”. The Self is synonymous with the psyche or soul of a person.

Trickster: The trickster is often a hero who uses cunning, manipulation and deceit to reach his goal.Shadow: This archetype exhibits characteristics that are considered uncivilized. He or she is often antagonistic and attempts to hinder the hero in his journey.Anima: This archetype is dominated by the feminine characteristics of the anima, and consequently represses the masculine characteristics of the Animus.Animus: This archetype is dominated by the masculine characteristics of the Animus, and consequently represses the feminine characteristics of the Anima.

Wise Old Man: The Wise Old Man is concerned with meanings and ideas rather than the actions and personalities of others,. He is a scholar, teacher, sage and philosopher. Seductress: The Seductress, is usually represented as a female who is beautiful, sensuous, manipulative and destructive.Mother: This archetype is nurturing, life giving, creative and loving. She is known as the Great Mother and also as Mother Earth.Child: The child is vulnerable, innocent and needs protection from the mother archetype.

http://www.dramatica.com/theory/theory_book/dtb_ch_4.htmlwww.tenafly.k12.nj.us/~eschwartz/ArchetypePPT.ppt Literature in Critical Perspectives, edited by Walter K. Gordonwww.coe.unt.edu/northstar/2004/Demos/Using_Movies.pptwww.tenafly.k12.nj.us/~eschwartz/ArchetypePPT.pptMyth and the movies: discovering the mythic structure of 50 unforgettable films, by Stuart Voytilla Storybuilder User's Manual http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/persona.htmlhttp://pandc.ca/?cat=carl_jung&page=major_archetypes_and_individuation

The basics:•Historical critics see works as the

reflection of an author's life and times and/or of the characters' life and times.

•Apply specific historical information about the time period to the text

• History meaning the social, political, economic, cultural and/or intellectual climate of the time

Questions to ask:• How does this information add to

the meaning of the text? •What does it reveal about the

author’s message?

• Example: William Faulkner wrote many of his novels and stories during or after WWII, which helps explain the feeling of darkens, defeat and struggle that pervade most of his work.

The Basics:•Cultural and economic

disadvantages in a patriarchal society have hindered women from realizing their possibilities

• See women’s cultural identification as a merely negative object or as “other” to man, the defining and dominating subject.

The Basics:Several assumptions held in common by

most feminist critics:

•Our civilization is pervasively patriarchal

•The idea of gender is mostly a cultural construct

• Patriarchal ideology pervades what has been considered great literature

• Such works lack autonomous female characters, are implicitly addressed to male readers and leave the woman as the outsider

The Basics:Elaine Showalter’s Three Stages:(1) Feminine Stage - involves "imitation of the prevailing modes of the dominant tradition" and "internalization of its standards."(2) Feminist Stage - involves "protest against these standards and values and advocacy of minority rights...."(3) Female Stage - this is the "phase of self-discovery, a turning inwards freed from some of the dependency of opposition, a search for identity."

Questions to ask:• Who are the women characters in the

story? How are they portrayed?• What is the author communicating about

women?• How does the work define and/or address

gender issues? • How does the work reflect a patriarchal

society?• How do the female characters reflect the

three stages?Create an example from film or literature on the lines to

the right.

The basics:

• Psychoanalysis- a group of theories which concern the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious.

•  Also called the psychological approach

• Psychological critics view works through the lens of psychology or psychoanalysis.

• They look either at the psychological motivations of the characters or of the authors themselves.

The basics:

• Most frequently, psychological critics apply Freudian psychology to works, but other approaches also exist.

• A Freudian approach often includes pinpointing the influences of a character's

• id- the instinctual, pleasure seeking part of the mind

• superego- the part of the mind that represses the id's impulses

• ego- the part of the mind that controls but does not repress the id's impulses, releasing them in a healthy way

The basics:• Freudian critics like to point out the sexual

implications of symbols and imagery, since Freud's believed that all human behavior is motivated by sexuality.

• They tend to see concave images, such as ponds, flowers, cups, and caves as female symbols

• objects that are longer than they are wide are usually seen as phallic symbols.

• Dancing, riding, and flying are associated with sexual pleasure.

• Water is usually associated with birth, the female principle, the maternal, the womb, and the death wish.

Questions to ask:• What are the motivations of the character?

•What is an in-depth analysis of the characters if they were real people?

•How are the author’s psychological conflicts revealed in his or her work?

•What is the appeal of the work to the readers in relation to their own ability to work out hidden desires and fears?

Examples:    In Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin, Mrs. Bennet is a

self-centered woman with the attitude that what is good enough for her is good enough for her children.  She married for financial security and showed her true personality only afterwards.  She does not believe in educating her children beyond the information they need to find a husband, but is very single minded in trying to make her children achieve this goal. She is obsessive about it, in fact, and refuses to come out of her room or even dress when Lydia and Wickham run off together because she is afraid Lydia may have ruined her chance to be married and disgraced the family with her tainted reputation.  She is much relieved and happy with the connection when Lydia and Wickham agree to marry even though they do not love each other.

From: http://www.northern.edu/benkertl/psychological_criticism.html

• Does not designate one critical theory • Focuses on the activity of reading a work

of literature• Features of a work– including narrator,

plot, characters, style and structures– become less important than the reader’s connection to the text

• Proponents believe that literature has no objective meaning

• Reader brings their own thoughts, moods and experiences to the text and get out of it a unique personal meaning

Questions to ask:• Which characters in the work do I

relate to? Why? • What personal memories and

experiences does the work remind me of?

• How does the literature make me feel?

• Do I like this work? Why or why not? What outside influences affect my response?

Example: For instance, in reading the parable of the prodigal son in the New Testament, different readers are likely to have different responses. Someone who has lived a fairly straight and narrow life and who does not feel like he has been rewarded for it is likely to associate with the older brother of the parable and sympathize with his opposition to the celebration over the prodigal son's return. Someone with a more checkered past would probably approach the parable with more sympathy for the younger brother. A parent who had had difficulties with a rebellious child would probably focus on the father, and, depending on his or her experience, might see the father's unconditional acceptance of the prodigal as either good and merciful or as unwise and overindulgent. While the parable might disturb some, it could elicit a feeling of relief from others, which, presumably, is what Christ intended it to do, and a more skillful critic might be able to analyze the strategies Christ employed to elicit those responses. From:http://www.literatureclassics.com/ancientpaths/litcrit.html#Psych

The basics:• An archetypal approach to literature

assumes that there is a collection of symbols, images, characters, and motifs (i.e. archetypes) that evokes basically the same response in all people.  

• According to the psychologist Carl Jung, mankind possesses a "collective unconscious" that contains these archetypes and that is common to all of humanity. 

• Myth critics identify these archetypal patterns and discuss how they function in the works.

• They believe that these archetypes are the source of much of literature's power.

Some Archetypes• archetypal women - the Good Mother, the

Terrible Mother, and the Soul Mate • water - creation, birth-death-resurrection,

purification, redemption, fertility, growth• garden - paradise (Eden), innocence, fertility• desert - spiritual emptiness, death, hopelessness• red - blood, sacrifice, passion, disorder• green - growth, fertility• black - chaos, death, evil• serpent - evil, sensuality, mystery, wisdom,

destruction• seven - perfection• shadow, persona, and anima (also psychological

criticism)

• hero archetype and the heroic cycle

Questions to ask:• What characters, symbols, and patterns seem familiar?• How do they impact the meaning of the text?• How does the work answer basic life questions:

•Why are we here? •What is the meaning of life?•What happens after we die?•What does it mean to be a complete

person? Example: Create an example from film or literature on the lines to the right.

Resources: Critical Encounters by Deborah ApplemanIntroducing Critical Theory by Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon http://www.northern.edu/benkertl/psychological_criticism.htmlhttp://www.literatureclassics.com/ancientpaths/litcrit.html#historicalhttp://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1569http://www.gpc.edu/%7eshale/humanities/composition/handouts/crit.htmlhttp://www.colleges.org/techcenter/Fellowships/grants/fellows01/alexander.pdfl