Musings on AK Ramanujan's 'Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?'

 

ARCHETYPAL APPROACH SIMPLIFIED 

 

It is an approach of literary criticism that attempts to understand a text by focusing attention on the myths and archetypes that keep recurring in the narrative. There may be certain symbols, images and types of characters who keep reappearing again and again in the literary texts.

An archetype is a statement, a type of behaviour, a prototype or a model that others emulate, imitate or copy. Archetypal criticism became very popular in the 140s and 1950s. The most important critic associated with archetypal criticism is the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912-1991). 

Archetypal criticism is also known as “the totemic, mythological or ritualistic” and it involves a very close reading of the text under consideration. More than a mere appreciation of the language and the way it is used to create the text, archetypal criticism focuses on the psychological effect of the work on the minds of the readers. It is sociological and historical and yet stresses upon the eternal nature and appeal of literature.

Two very important and influential figures who have contributed to the importance of the archetypal approach gaining importance in literary studies are Sir James Frazer and Carl Jung. James Frazer was a Scottish anthropologist deeply interested in mythology and folklore. His most famous work The Golden Bough is a huge twelve volume work published from 1890 to 1915. The book records and documents the magical and religious beliefs of people living in different parts of the world. He believed that fertility rites, human sacrifice, the concept of the dying god ( gods who permanently leave the earth and go elsewhere) and that of the scapegoat (one of a pair of kid goats that would be allowed to roam free in the wilderness, after the other one was sacrificed. The other was left to live and carry away the sins and evils committed by the community and it was left to wander in the wilderness). Frazer believed that old religions evolved and developed from the social and religious practices that were devised in olden times to encourage reproduction among humans and in the natural world. These fertility rites often involved the prayers to the gods and the sacrifice of a symbolic sacred king. The king was considered to be the avatar or the incarnation of a dying and gradually recurring god, a god who undergoes a ritual marriage and dies during the harvest season. Then he is reborn in the spring season. Rebirth and reincarnation are the central beliefs of many religions.

    During the 1920s, a group of scholars in Cambridge University (Cantabrigian) studied the ancient Greek classics of Homer and others. They applied Frazer and Edward Tylor’s studies on myths to understand the ancient classic texts. They were Jane Harrison, F.M. Cornford, Gilbert Murray and others. They searched for the use of rituals in Greek comedy and Jane Harrison explored the influence of Greek society on Greek religion in her book Ancient Art and Ritual, 1913.

The most important contributor to archetypal criticism was the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung who also founded analytical psychology. He joined with Sigmund Freud, but soon there were differences and both went their separate ways. Jung’s theory of “collective unconscious” is indispensable in understanding the archetypal approach.

Carl Jung

Jung coined the term “collective unconscious” in his 1916 essay “The Structure of the Unconscious”. He believed that the unconscious part of our mind is filled with dreams, fantasies, and “archetypes” or “primordial images”. They are not acquired by us through our conscious experience, rather we inherit them from our predecessors when we are born. Therefore the collective unconscious, according to Jung contains the psychic life of our ancestors who lived in olden times. It is not developed or acquired by us through our present personal experiences. It is already within us when we are born and it is “a system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals”. If this is true then it justifies and explains our deep curiosity and interest in ancient mythical stories despite the fact that we no longer believe in the existence of supernatural elements present in these stories.

Frazer believed that these myths are valuable and they are valid. Jung believed that we all carry these myths within us and they are stored in our collective memory. These two concepts attracted the attention of novelists like D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence had his own concept of the unconscious that he referred to as the “blood consciousness”. He believed that the blood in our bodies is intuitive, that means it can sense certain things and it remembers prehistoric and primordial religious ideas that were once part of the faith of our ancient ancestors. Our blood responds instinctively to nature and this cannot be explained in scientific terms. So he firmly believed that modern man must positively respond to nature and its elemental forces in order to live a life closely attuned to nature.

D.H. Lawrence

    T.S. Eliot in his notes to The Wasteland underlines his debt to Jesse Weston’s work From Ritual to Romance and The Golden Bough. Eliot used these texts to establish the fact that there are certain universal attitudes, perspectives and behavioural patterns that are exhibited by people everywhere, irrespective of their time and place. This concept also influenced other writers like James Joyce, W.B. Yeats and C.S. Lewis. Man’s perpetual and eternal search for love is also such a universal idea that has existed since time immemorial.

T.S. Eliot

This influenced literary critics to analyse literary texts with the belief that there would be some universal mythical idea or concept in every literary work. Critics who considered texts from the archetypal perspective started searching for those similar or universal meanings which are present in a number of books. The glaring difference between Freudians (followers of Freud) and Jungians (followers of Jung) has been explained in the essay. Freudians firmly believed that ancient rituals and forbidden practices (taboos) were performed and followed consciously by the ancient people. These were retained in the unconscious memory of modern man. The Freudians believe that if we continue to carry these practices and taboos in our minds then we are suffering from illness.

The Jungians had a contradictory belief. They believed that if we retain these ancient rituals and taboos in our minds, then we are not showing signs of illness, but we are actually asserting our participation in the collective unconsciousness. Erich Fromm, German social psychologist, has stated that myths are a means of communication between the past and the present generation. Therefore the artist is not a neurotic, but somebody who has the ability to convey an ancient and universal truth which governs our lives or is applicable to our life even today.

Archetypal criticism helps to unravel this secret message that is present in literary texts and interpret it for us in such a way that it has relevance for us in our modern life. D. H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature published in 1923 reflects his interest in the primitive myths and their relevance in modern human life. His analysis of Natty Bumpo (protagonist of American novelist James Fennimore Cooper’s novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales) and Hester Prynne (protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter) as archetypes is an assertion of this interest. Maud Bodkins Archetypal Patterns in Poetry published in 1934 also analyses archetypal patterns. Kenneth Burke, the Ameican literary theorist, poet, essayist and novelist considered the artist as a ‘medicine man’ and his creative work as his “medicine “. In his famous essay “Antony in Behalf of the Play” he discusses this relationship. Shakespeare, the dramatist, his creation- his dramas and his audience share a relationship that gave Shakespeare a certain influence over his audience.

MOBY DICK

Archetypes and ritual patterns in Shakespeare have been analysed by Colin Still in The Timeless Theme in 1936 and also by Wilson Knight. Archetypal approach to literature does not focus on specific myths alone. It can uncover certain universal cultural patterns or images which have been a permanent aspect of certain cultures.

Leslie Fiedler, American literary critic has analysed American novels like Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. He has come to the conclusion that the close relationship between men in certain locations like the American cowboys in the erstwhile Wild West of the USA , certain fellowship rituals practised by boy gangs and ceremonies followed by adult American men are reflected in classic American novels also. His analyses were disturbing for many because they examined the homosexual elements in these closely bonded male relationships.

Archetypal approach has attracted a lot of negative criticism in recent times because critics believe that it does not assess or appreciate literature. It looks at the archetypes and the myths but fails to justify the claims it makes in course of the analysis. Richard Chase’s book on Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick has been criticised by American literary critic Malcolm Cowley for blending “a mess of Freudian and Christian symbols”.

Totemic or archetypal approach attracts a lot of negative criticism, but at the same time a purely scientific concept of man as an apex, rational being is questioned by anthropological literature. This is because it believes in considering human beings as creatures that give importance to the mythical and primordial aspects in human nature. Anthropological literature firmly believes that we are members of an ancient race and this is reflected in the literature we create.