Thinking Activity on Northrop Frye: The Archetypes of Literature

Literature and Religion

With the help of reading this column of Raj Gausvami, I agree because there are many people who are doing wrong and spreading superstitions still in the era of science and technology. People should be thinker, not a blind follower.

We are using various characters from mythology in literary art but it should be more for practical understanding or for developments of historical sense but somehow we are making an error to understand.

1) What is Archetypal Criticism? What does the archetypal critic do?

          In literary criticism the term archetype denotes recurrent narratives designs, patterns of action, character-types, themes, and images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even social rituals.

          Archetypal critic identifies the mental patterns of myth and rituals, Carl. G. Jung. (1875-1961) who applied the term "archetype"

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

          Frye says that physics is an organized body of knowledge about nature. But students say that they are learning physics not nature. All art is the study of Nature and criticism is the study of arts. So Frye says that one can't teach learn literature, but yes one can learn how to criticize.

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

          History and Philosophy both are important pillars of Literature. So literature used knowledge of the past by the use of ideas and create literature. For understanding, literature readers must refer to history for events and Philosophy for ideas. Frye has used the word centrifugal, which means to go away from literature and find a background for understanding literature.

4) Briefly explain inductive method with illustration of Shakespeare's Hamlet's Grave Digger's scene.

          In the play  " Hamlet " we find the inductive method during the grave-digging scene. In this method, the process goes with specific to general.

Example from 'Hamlet' is Gravedigging scene where 2 diggers are talking with one another and singing songs during their work of Gravedigging, we can see that they are happy with their work they have neither pain nor grief for dead one so after that we come to know that they are now habituated by their work.

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

          Deductive Method come from general to specific or particular observations. Music through we can understand the rhythm of it whereas in paining we can find patterns or colors, but by listening to some of the lines from the music we are not able to understand everything but by looking at a painting we can get an idea about patterns. Literature seems to be intermediate between music and painting.

6) 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.