Archetypal criticism examines the presence of simple, recognizable character models in literature, based on the works of Carl Jung. Northrop Frye built on these ideas, dividing archetypes into comedic and tragic categories. Christopher Booker narrowed stories down to seven basic plot archetypes.
Archetypal criticism is a type of literary criticism that examines the presence of archetypal characters within a piece of literature. Such characters can be found in works of fiction, long or short, and in more poetic works. The archetypal character is a simple character model recognizable to all readers. Archetypal criticism is part of social anthropology and psychoanalysis.
The idea of character archetypes is based on the works of psychologist Carl Jung. An archetype is essentially a character prototype. Such prototypes find their way into all manner of literature and history across generations, cultures and languages. While the idea of such basic characters was developed by Jung in the 20th century, the word itself has been in use in England since the 1540s.
Jung was Swiss and was the first to reject the then pervasive idea of the tabula rasa. Tabula rasa is an idea that all children are born as a blank slate. This goes back to the 4th and 5th century theological discussions about how God gives children souls and they are born sinners. Jung argued that each child is instead born with an archetypal pattern built into it. This model remains only potential until the child grows up.
Northrop Frye was a Canadian thinker who built on the ideas of Jung. He cared less about the how and why of natural archetypes and more about their functions and effects. He believed that archetypes and archetypal criticism constituted an important part of literature. Archetypes allow stories and literature to renew and reform again and again. This means that old stories can be told in a new way, but with the archetypes present to give it meaning to people.
Frye, just like Aristotle, divided archetypal stories into two main branches in his 1951 Anatomy of Criticism: comic and tragic. Comedic fiction was further divided into comedy and romance. Tragic has been divided into tragedy and satire.
Frye’s works limit archetypes to their contexts or the genre of their story. This means that there are specific comic and specific tragic archetypes. Modern literature, especially with postmodernism, often mixes different genres of stories, and also mixes genre characters. Furthermore, Frye’s divisions are simplistic and do not recognize story forms such as science fiction, gothic, and detective fiction.
The archetypal critique regarding characters in literature has also led to the critique of story types. This begs the question of whether there are specific plot archetypes. Christopher Booker’s ideas on archetypal criticism narrowed the stories down to seven basic story lines. These are the quest, the journey, the rebirth and the comedy. Tragedy, rags to riches, and overcoming the monster are the last three.
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