Introduction
The place of archetypal theory in the academy
seems always, or at least regularly, to have been uncomfortable; however,
one of its most robust and academically successful advocates has been Northrop
Frye, who in Anatomy of Criticism delineates an archetypal approach
to literary analysis. A biographer declares Frye to be one of the
most cited authors of the twentieth century, behind only Roland Barthes,
Lenin and Freud, and credits him with publishing three of the most influential
books of literary criticism of all time: Fearful Symmetry, his study
of Blake, Anatomy of Criticism, and The Great Code, in which
Frye applies archetypal literary theory to The Bible (Ayre). (Ayre
published before its companion piece, Words with Power (1990), was
released.)
Archetypal literary theory begins, however,
with Carl Jung, and he most clearly addresses the topic in The Spirit
in Man, Art and Literature, which contains two essays (first published
1922 and 1930) about literary archetypal analysis and one discussion of
James Joyce’s Ulysses. As early as 1912 in Psychology of the
Unconscious, Jung analyzes Longfellow’s Hiawatha, though he
never wrote a full psychological analysis of a literary work (van Meurs
19). Jung’s theory and practice require constant amplification of archetypal
themes as found in literature, and favored and much cited works include
Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Goethe’s Faust, and Nietzsche’s
Thus
Spoke Zarathustra. Influenced by Jung, many others have implemented
archetypal theory in literary studies. For instance, Jos van Meurs’ bibliographic
survey of Jungian literary criticism between the years 1920 and 1980 runs
to nine hundred entries.
However, due to the influx of critical postmodern
perspectives throughout the last two decades of the twentieth century,
archetypal criticism generally, and Frye’s influence and prestige specifically,
began to wane. Frye clearly does not implement a Jungian archetypal
analysis; however, while within the field of archetypal literary theory
scholars may distinguish between Jungian archetypal theory and other types
of mythological or archetypal theory, outside of this field such fine distinctions
are often conflated by its critics.
Frye’s work was and is criticized as hopelessly
modernist, and Frye was unable or uninterested in answering his postmodern
critics in a manner they found compelling. I hope to demonstrate
that archetypal theory, as articulated by Northrop Frye and Carl Jung,
remains a powerful tool in literary criticism. I find much that is
compelling in both postmodern and archetypal theory, and I hope to use
archetypal literary theory to posit a solution to a postmodern critique
regarding the role of ideology in literary analysis. I propose that the
means of doing so has suggestive implications for answering critiques of
archetypal theory throughout the academy.
Northrop Frye’s emphasis on the universal
nature of mythic structures and the resulting privileged position he accords
to mythology over ideology, is problematic for many scholars, including
Deanne Bogdan, who criticizes Northrop Frye from a postmodern, feminist
perspective. I will first present Frye’s and then Bogdan’s positions
regarding the relationship between mythology and ideology, and then I will
explicate some relevant aspects of Jungian archetypal theory not considered
by either Frye or Bogdan. In the end, I will attempt to synthesize
the theoretical positions of Frye, Bogdan and Jung in order to posit that
Jung provides a means of explaining archetypal literary theory to its critics
without dismissing their valid concerns. I hypothesize that this
synthesis will contribute to positioning archetypal theory in such a manner
as to allow it to remain cogent and relevant in light of postmodern critiques,
and to do so without marginalizing or ignoring postmodern theoretical insights.
Northrop Frye and Ideology
In Anatomy of Criticism, Frye defines
the aims of archetypal literary theory as an attempt to describe a few
of the basic grammatical elements of literary expression in the classical
and Christian heritage of the western literary tradition by focusing on
the aspects of literature that are comparable to tonality, rhythm, and
canonical imitation in music (133). In “Forming Fours,” a review
of Jung’s Two Essays on Analytical Psychology and Psychology
and Alchemy, Frye describes archetypal literary theory as “that mode
of criticism which treats the poem not as an imitation of nature but as
an imitation of other poems. It studies conventions and genres, and
the kind of recurrent imagery which connects one poem with another” (616).
By mythology, Frye means the underlying structure
discernible in stories. About mythology, Frye points out there are
only a few species of myth though there are an infinite number of individual
myths (Words with Power 23). For example, these species, or
archetypes, of myths include “myths of creation, of fall, of exodus and
migration, of the destruction of the human race in the past (deluge myths)
or the future (apocalyptic myths), and of redemption” (23). Frye uses the
term archetype differently than Jung does. By archetype, Frye means
only a recurring pattern. In Anatomy of Criticism, he clearly
states that he sees no need for the collective unconscious in the domain
of literary studies (112).
By ideology, Frye means “structures of social
authority” (WP 16), wherein “the principle invoked is that we belong
to something before we are anything, that our loyalties and sense of solidarity
are prior to intelligence. This sense of solidarity is not simply emotional,
any more than it is simply intellectual; it might better be called existential”
(18). Frye identifies ideology with solidified dogma (22).
He thinks that “an ideology starts by providing its own version of whatever
in its traditional mythology it considers relevant, and uses this version
to form and enforce a social contract. An ideology is thus an applied
mythology, and its adaptations of myths are ones that, when we are inside
an ideological structure, we must believe, or say we believe” (23). Frye
asserts that an ideology’s desire to make its own canon and perspective
the only acceptable choice results in intolerance and persecution as all
other perspectives are denounced as heretical or perhaps even evil (24).
Frye gives priority to mythology over ideology
because ideologies develop and dissipate while the archetypal myth remains.
Mythologies, or archetypal patterns, are capable of being created and viewed
through many ideologies. Myth is a source of ideology (WP 31) but
is not dependent on ideology. Ideology is a partial and static implementation
of the fluid myth or archetype. In the following excerpt,
Frye makes his point about the value of mythic structure over ideology:
The principle involved is that there is a flexibility in the story
that its ideological reference does not permit. To paraphrase an axiom
of D.H. Lawrence, we should trust no writer’s beliefs or attitudes, but
concentrate on his [sic] myth, which is infinitely wiser than he
is, and is the only element that can survive when the ideology attached
to it fades (60). |
It is this very flexibility of the archetypal structure that in Frye’s
mind gives it more value and privilege than ideology, which is less likely
to be flexible (24).
For Frye, the ideological is also less valuable
in literary theory because it places a political or personal agenda before
a literary agenda. Frye characterizes many contemporary critics as
still being stuck in what he terms an ideological stage because they are
interested in their ideology more than they are interested in literature;
they approach literature first from a feminist, historical, radical, post-colonial
or religious position (WP 27). Frye anticipates ideological
criticisms of his theories, and of literature, and he presents such an
ideological emphasis as a hedge clipper, trimming away—denying the value
of-- all that does not fit the ideology. The hedge (literature, myth, archetypal
structure) is made to fit the view approved by the ideology (WP 60).
In Words with Power, Frye does not
seek to deny ideological approaches to literature; he accepts them as valid
and valuable. He says only that should be some critics who are interested
in literature before ideology and that they should deal with literature
in terms of its own metaphorical and mythical structures and language (WP
27). Frye explains the relationship between mythology and ideology
as follows: “I think of a poet, in relation to his [sic] society,
as being at the center of a cross like a plus sign. The horizontal
bar forms the social and ideological conditioning that made him intelligible
to his contemporaries, and in fact to himself. The vertical bar is
the mythological line of descent from previous poets back to Homer” (47).
Frye’s success in gaining acceptance
for the separation of mythology from ideology has only been partial as
the arguments Frye has asserted about the dead end of ideology have not
been widely accepted (Salusinsky 82). Frye himself must have been dissatisfied
with the success of his project as he spends one hundred pages of Words
With Power revising and restating his concepts of ideology and mythology,
a discussion he first broached in The Critical Path, twenty years
earlier (Salusinsky 78). For reasons I will investigate next, Deanne
Bogdan, for one, remains unconvinced by Frye’s conception.
A Postmodern Critique
Bogdan sifts through Frye’s theories
carefully, scrutinizing them to see what she can accept and what, in consideration
of current feminist research, must be submitted for re-education.
In the final chapter of her book Re-educating the Imagination, (the
title a comment on Frye’s The Educated Imagination) she considers
the hierarchy of mythology and ideology. Part of Bogdan’s concern
with Frye’s hierarchy is that it while it claims to be without ideology,
it actually invokes a patriarchal world view (274). Bogdan also asserts
that one’s situatedness determines what one notices and does not notice,
and that if one emphasizes myth over ideology, it makes it very easy for
one to accept, or not to notice, or to place little value on aspects of
a text (myth) that are unacceptable to the ideology. According to
Bogdan, asserting the hierarchy of mythology over ideology makes it more
likely that readers and critics might notice but then pass over patriarchal,
homophobic, and racist elements of literature (278). In Re-Educating
the Imagination, Bogdan responds to Frye’s image of the intersection
of the vertical mythological line and the horizontal social and ideological
line by asserting that her “impulse to remake and redo this text
would be to say that for women and women writers the center of the cross
is more like a minus sign”(277).
Rather than a hierarchy, Bogdan conceptualizes
mythology and ideology as inter-related and permeable. “We might say that
the attention constructs influencing what is regarded as fictional and
what, real …become skewed when logos is mistaken for mythos. Part
of getting them straight, I submit, involves making gender a marker of
the permeable boundaries between ideology and mythology” (281).
In Beyond Communication, Bogdan presents
a feminist analysis of Canadian author Sinclair Ross’s short story, “The
Painted Door,” in which she points out the story’s patriarchal implications
(150-154). In Bogdan’s ideological interpretation of the story, the sexual
agency of a female protagonist is blamed for the death of her husband and
results in a burden of guilt for the woman. Tragic events result from opening
the Pandora’s box of female sexuality. Thus female independence
and sexuality are dealt a blow by patriarchy. In this view, the story would
be problematic for many readers. I find this aspect of Bogdan’s analysis
understandable and valid from a feminist point of view, though I would
offer an alternative interpretation from a Jungian perspective.
Bogdan also goes on to refer to Robert Scholes’
description of the patriarchal nature of narrative itself due to its structure
of delayed gratification (186). She cites Teresa de Lauretis, a film
theorist, who presents a feminist critique rooted in Freudian psychoanalytic
principles. She argues “trenchantly that the thrust toward fulfillment
of desire by way of progression from beginning, middle, to a climatic end,
wherein the hero’s sense of loss is restored by a renewed vision of how
things are, is a male paradigm” (186). Bogdan also concludes that narrative
form is itself inherently patriarchal (187), a position that I find problematic.
Bogdan asserts that this realization dissolves the hierarchical relationship
between mythology and ideology because “the genderization of narrative
form renders mythology itself ideological” (187). So Bogdan first
presents an ideological critique of the story and then secondly goes on
to declare that the narrative form itself is patriarchal. The combination
of two moves, but especially the second, seems to invalidate other perspectives
and to position Frye’s desire to separate myth and ideology as an unacceptable
patriarchal remnant.
Bogdan is obviously not the only critic
of Frye, and feminism not the only postmodern ideological perspective from
which to criticize him. I will now briefly introduce two other relevant
postmodern critiques of Frye. I do so to illustrate the degree to which
Frye has been marginalized and to investigate how Jung’s archetypal theories
might respond to some valid concerns of postmodernism as well as to Bogdan
specifically. In an article entitled “Frye’s place in Contemporary
Cultural Studies,” Hayden White conveys concern from another perspective:
Contemporary practitioners of what has come to be called ‘cultural
studies’ have not on the whole found much of use in Frye’s work. In part
that is because cultural studies is a neo-Marxist activity…and paranoically
hostile to anything smacking of formalism, structuralism, idealism, or
organicism. Insofar, then, as Frye’s work is noted at all by practitioners
of cultural studies, it is as an example of these fallacious or misguided
(insofar as they are ahistorical) ideologies. He is put down as one
who believed that literature was paradigmatic of culture, that culture
itself was an autonomous vis a vis society and the modes of material production
that determine dominant social formations, and that, accordingly, both
culture and society can be studied only in an ahistorical, which is to
say, a synchronic, structuralist, or formal manner. The panorama
of historical occurrence which Frye is supposed to have confronted consists
of a finite set of forms of cultural expression of which literature is
a paradigm. These interact significantly only with one another and
not at all with the more mundane world of economic, political, and social
praxis, and they develop only insofar as they succeed one another in positions
of dominance and subordination cyclically (rather than progressively or
developmentally or dialectically). For Frye, it would seem, everything
happens in cycles. So goes the negative account of Frye’s system
(29). |
Wladimir Krysinski articulates another postmodern
critique of archetypal theory in his article, “Frye and the Problems of
Modernity.” Krysinski critically analyzes Frye’s affinities with modernism
and structuralism. Krysinski invokes Jean-Francois Lyotard’s concern
with metanarratives, as an example of structuralism, to make his point:
“It is important to bear in mind that Lyotard explicitly links metanarrative
and metadiscourse to his definition of the modern…Lyotard defines the postmodern
as an ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’” (256). Certainly the attempt
to find the archetypal structural similarities inherent in literature has
qualities of a metanarrative or metadiscourse and so will be suspect from
a postmodern perspective. Archetypal theory does consider that which
might be held in common, might be shared, may even be universal, and these
are the very concepts critically analyzed by the postmodern emphasis on
the unique, particular and situated (I will show below that Jung provides
the balancing emphasis in archetypal theory on the individual and the situated).
Postmodernism is defined by its resistance to overarching metanarratives
of a kind found in Frye’s theories. I posit that the archetypal theory
of Carl Jung can be used to assuage some of these concerns and respond
in a more compelling manner than Frye can to a postmodern critique.
Archetype and Archetypal Image.
In an attempt to bridge the gap between
Frye’s modernist archetypal perspective and its postmodern critique, I
will now present a further exegesis of an important aspect of Jungian analytical
psychology. It is important for my project to consider Jung’s differentiation
of the ‘archetype’ from the ‘archetypal image.’ The archetype is
unknowable and irrepresentable; it is merely a shared impulse to create
pattern; its nature can only be guessed at from an overview of its representations,
all of which are located, specific and embodied in dreams, rituals, myths
and art. As the ‘archetype’ is transformed into the ‘archetypal image’
it takes on the characteristics of the individual and/or collective into
which it arrives. Archetypal images are transformed by the psyches
that create them in order to provide a balancing message for that psyche;
the archetype is transformed into an archetypal image that responds to
the needs of the specific ego. If the collective or individual psyche,
for instance, is patriarchal, the archetypal image may be influenced by
that attitude; it may manifest what is happening in order to encourage
consciousness of the situation or it may manifest what needs to happen
in order to illuminate possibilities that might achieve balance (Jung,
FA 5).
The archetype is not defined by the content of any one manifestation
nor even by the accrued total of all its manifestations. Archetypes
are apolitical; archetypal images are political; archetypes are not
ideological; archetypal images are located within ideologies. (Jung,
FA 13; see also Jung, OTNOTP, 123,). |
The archetypal image can never be known in a pure form; it can only
be inferred from the collection of its situated and ideological manifestations.
An archetype is not a Platonic form that exists separately from its manifestations:
it is the shared aspect of unique manifestations. It is my premise
that Frye’s assertions that mythology and ideology can be separated were
an attempt to distinguish between the archetype and the archetypal image
but that he lacked the depth of Jungian archetypal theory to articulate
his distinction.
Ideology as Archetypal Image
Without the nuanced aspect of Jungian
thought that distinguishes between archetype and archetypal image, Frye’s
archetypal literary theory has not been able to respond to its postmodern
critics because Frye has not been able to articulate how the apolitical
myth or archetype can be considered apart from its political manifestation.
Willard defines the problem:
Archetypal criticism, so called, has gone out of fashion during the
last decade or two. Partly because post-structuralism has rejected the
very possibility of a ‘totally intelligible’ criticism such as Frye hoped
to derive from archetypes, and partly because the old determinisms that
he rejected—Marxism, Thomism, and the like (AC, 6,17)—have been replaced
by the new determinisms of race, class, and gender, which resist anything
that smacks of elitism. It is commonplace to say, as Charles Baldick
does in The Concise Oxford Book of Literary Terms, that archetypal
criticism is reductive and ignores ‘cultural differences’ (17). These
changes remind me of a remark that Alfred Harbage made in the early fifties,
not long after having been selected over Frye for a Shakespeare position
at Harvard. Harbage suggested that literary criticism was in need
of a word like ‘anarchetype’ to account for radical innovations in the
drama…If Frye had been the debating type, he would have shot back that
an archetype has no more politics in it than a metrical form does, and
it remains for the individual poet to put a revolutionary or conservative
spin on the archetype in question. (Willard, “Archetypes of the Imagination”
21) |
Because Frye does not acknowledge the relevance
of the collective unconscious to his literary theory, he is missing Jung’s
theory of the purpose and method of archetypal manifestations, and so he
is trapped. Bogdan and his other critics are too compelling to be easily
dismissed. If Frye had Jung’s ability and desire to explain how it is that
mythology has elements that transcend ideology and at the same time acknowledge
that all manifestations of mythology are ideologically situated, he might
have been more successful with his postmodern critics. However, Frye
just gets frustrated and restates his thesis that mythology transcends
ideology, and he does not seem to understand why others do not just accept
this point. His critics are stating their valid concerns with the archetypal
image, and Frye just continues trying to emphasize the archetype itself.
He seems to be marginalizing and disregarding the valid concerns raised
by the postmodern critic.
Bogdan’s book Beyond Communication
includes three essays by Bogdan in which she articulates her postmodern
feminist critiques of Frye’s work. Bogdan, a student and then a colleague
of Frye, asked him to write an introduction, which he wrote, but which
she then did not publish. In this “Unpublished Introduction to Beyond Communication,”
which can now be found in Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education, Frye wrote,
[W]e have feminist, Marxist or deconstructive critics who are primarily
interested in those subjects, and approach literature with the aim of annexing
it their main interest. Here every work of literature becomes a document
for feminism or Marxism, to be examined within that point of view…Such
determinations, it is clear, are imperialistic ideologies out to conquer
one more field. Their proponents say that if they didn’t conquer
it some other ideology would because every critical approach is equally
ideological. I think this is a half-truth. An ideology is a
myth kidnapped by a power structure or a pressure group, and it is essential
to distinguish the ideological from the mythological elements in every
work of literature. I wish the present book had paid more attention
to the study of myths and folk tales and the way in which they reflect
the primary concerns of mankind, the concerns of food and sex and property
and freedom. Because it is these concerns that the poets have inherited,
and just as there is information that is separable from the ideologies
that normally transmit it, so there are concerns that belong to all humanity,
and are still there whatever their ideological contexts.” (612) |
Here is the dilemma made manifest in the crucible of a single book and
its introduction, which remained unpublished until it was included in Frye’s
collected works. Frye is trying to separate the manifestations of
the archetype, the archetypal images, from the myth, the archetypal pattern,
but lacks Jung’s language and theory to do so. After the extensive analysis
in Bogdan’s chapters, Frye responds by merely reiterating the hierarchy
between mythology and ideology in a way that does not address her critique.
If he had been able to frame his reply in terms of Jungian archetypal theory,
he might have seemed more compelling to his critics.
Jung and Postmodern Feminism
In using Jung to respond to a postmodern feminist
critique of Frye, I think it is germane to consider a postmodern feminist
critique of Jung. My project of using Jung to reconcile Frye and
his critics is made possible because there are elements of Jung’s thought
that are modernist and structuralist and there are elements of his thought
that are postmodern. Feminist scholar Susan Rowland is not a Jungian
analyst and she is certainly not unquestionably supportive of Jung’s theories,
but in her book Jung: A Feminist Revision, where she critically
analyzes Jung from her perspective as a postmodern feminist, she recognizes
that
the theory of archetypes as basic, inherited structuring principles
within the psyche puts Jung squarely in the tradition of structuralism.
Of course, archetypes are not structures in the sense of fixed entities,
as they are definitely not inherited images. What archetypes generate
in the individual psyche varies widely with cultural, social and personal
circumstances. Yet, archetypes are structuralist in suggesting an
underlying (if unfathomable) code…[but] the idea…of coexisting separate
local truths in the subjectivity of every person aligns Jung with postmodernism.
(102-3). |
Rowland also considers Jung’s work in
light of deconstruction and concludes:
On the one hand, the concepts of archetypes and archetypal images are
grand theory and logocentric. On the other hand, archetypal images
are signifiers without fixed, knowable signifieds. They are subject
to skippage and denied logocentric fulfillment. What Derrida alleges
about language finds a distinct echo in Jung’s depiction of psychic imagery.
Archetypal images demonstrate differance, differing from each other and
infinitely deferring a fixed meaning.
Indeed, given the significance of Jung’s unconscious to his psychology
as a whole, we could argue, in Derridean language, that his concepts exist
‘under erasure’. Theoretical meanings, like any others, cannot be secured,
hence the ‘erasure’ of their claims to fixed truth and authority.
In Writing and Difference, Derrida linked Freud to his deconstruction in
the radical otherness of the psychoanalytic unconscious, despite the logocentrism
present in Freudian writings. I would like to suggest that aspects
of Jung’s work bear an even more intimate relation to the project of deconstruction.
(106) |
Neither Rowland nor I are trying to suggest that Jung is a postmodern,
Derridean feminist, but we are recognizing that Jung’s theories have elements
that are similar to and compatible with a postmodern perspective.
Rowland points out, from this complex
perspective, which holds the tensions between modernism and postmodernism,
that in considering the nature of archetypal theory, “we need to remember
that unconscious archetypes are androgynous and plural”(40), Later in the
book, she describes Jung’s “androgynous archetypes, which are representable
only through culturally influenced archetypal images” (84). According
to Rowland, Jungian archetypal theory ought to ameliorate the influence
of patriarchy because “the Jungian unconscious is a nexus of superior creative
powers, not culturally derived. The unconscious should compensate
for and combat cultural stereotyping” (42).
Rowland points out how the androgynous
and apolitical archetypes are shared but that gendered, political, archetypal
images are situated:
By going back to Jung’s definition of the archetype, I would suggest
there is a structuring of subjectivity that does engage with a feminism
interested in a cultural and material shaping of gender identity.
The formless archetype supplies creative energy: the resulting image is
also shaped by the subject’s bodily and social integration into a culture.
For example, methods of mothering have varied enormously across
cultures and histories. An archetypal image of ‘mother’ will partake
of this diversity by being formed through a particular subjectivity, culture,
society and historical moment. It can be examined as one manifestation
of the ineffable multiplicity of the archetype and as witnessing material
conditions. (79) |
Here, in discussing an archetypal image of mother as one manifestation
of the archetype of mother while at the same time possessing the material
conditions of its situatedness, Rowland seems to echo Frye’s contention
that it is possible to distinguish the myth from the ideology—as seen through
my hypothesis that by myth Frye means archetype and that he sees ideology
as an archetypal image.
In considering Jung’s work in light of the
feminist theories of Helene Cixous, Rowland writes,
Cixous has made the greatest impact on feminist theory in what she
has called the ‘ecriture feminine’. In the first place, the idea
of ‘feminine writing’ is indebted to Derrida in writing as subject to differance.
This entails writing as a continual slippage of meaning, the undoing of
theoretical claims to secure signifying and to a unitary gendered subjectivity.
Ecriture feminine as a deliberate embrace of differance is a writing that
undoes patriarchal binary oppositions. It rejoices in spilling meaning.
(116).
[T]here are distinct possibilities for such post-Lacanian thinking to
draw out feminist potential in the ideas of Jung. As noted, ecriture
feminine as differance is close to the ‘writing’ of archetypal images,
which work through difference from each other and infinite deferral of
a single logocentric fulfillment of the meaning potential of archetypes.”
(117) |
While Rowland expresses concern and criticism over some aspects of Jungian
theory from her location as a postmodern feminist, she regards Jung as
a valuable thinker in postmodernism and a potential partner in postmodern
feminisms (130). Her optimism regarding Jungian thought derives at
least in part due to his subtle formulation of archetypal theory as shared
yet situated, political yet apolitical, and androgynous yet gendered.
Polysemous Meaning
Ideological readings may not separate the archetype
from the archetypal image, but they also may not embrace the polysemous
nature of the archetypal image itself. Even within the archetypal
image, the symbolic nature of art entails that many readings are possible,
but an ideological reading can shut down the validity of other interpretations
(though it does not have to). No ideology can contain the range of
possibilities of human potential, and this is as true of literary interpretation
as it is of modes of human behaviour. Art is symbolic and supports many,
and often contradictory, ideological interpretations (without suggesting
that ‘anything goes’); an ideological perspective may not validate other
hermeneutic points of view. There is a distinction to be made in
the ideological responses to which I refer. One kind of response
posits, for instance, a Marxist or feminist interpretation of a work and
accepts its perspective as one of many possible viewpoints. It would
be interesting, for instance, to consider feminist, Marxist and post-colonial,
historical, and biographical analyses of the same work. Each perspective
would be a lens with which to view the art, each noticing and overlooking
different characteristics of the work. However, another ideological stance,
and the one with which I take issue, might condemn a work as inherently
problematic. The problem here is that if a work is seen to be inherently
patriarchal, no other reading can be considered valid. I am also
suggesting that Frye’s stance accepts the first kind of response but not
the second.
Assertions that archetypes are no more political
than the structural forms of poetry or music, as seen in Frye’s intention
to “outline a few of the grammatical rudiments of literary expression,
and the elements of it that correspond to such musical elements as tonality,
simple and compound rhythm, canonical imitation, and the like” (AC 133),
and Willard’s claim “that an archetype has no more politics in it than
a metrical form does, and it remains for the individual poet to put a revolutionary
or conservative spin on the archetype in question” (21) are disputed
by feminist critics who argue that the very nature of such forms can themselves
be patriarchal, as seen above with Bogdan. Susan McClary makes such a claim
in her 1991 publication Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality,
in which she asserts that tonality and musical form, such as the sonata,
are inherently patriarchal because the structures mirror the male sexual
experience: an accelerating rhythm ending in a climax (12-13). She
does so while maintaining that her analysis is rooted only in “the music
itself” and that therefore her feminist stance has disclosed a patriarchal
aspect inherent in the music (23), not that feminisms provide an acceptable
interpretation alongside a myriad of other acceptable interpretations.
Feminist musicologist Elizabeth Sayrs acknowledges the symbolic nature
of art, of even the structure or form of art, when she responds to these
assertions by McClary. Sayrs suggests an alternate interpretation
of the same tonality and musical forms: the musical structure can be, but
is not necessarily or only, seen as a metaphor of the process of childbirth,
where accelerating contractions provide a definite climax in childbirth.
Here in a flash, the seemingly ‘inherently patriarchal’ aspects of the
musical form are dissipated in an interpretation acceptable to some feminisms.
This work from a feminist author implies that
to suggest a structure of art is inherently patriarchal is a problematic
assertion as it does not acknowledge the very nature of symbol and metaphor,
which are open to many, various and evolving interpretations. If
the structure is archetypal, metaphorical, and symbolic, to claim it is
inherently patriarchal is reductionist and denies the potential for difference.
There may be ideological elements and interpretations of valid concern,
elements that need to be defined and analyzed, but because of the metaphorical
and symbolic nature of art, there are also other, different, and varied
interpretations and uses to be made of the literature that tend to be invalidated
by an ideological interpretation.
I accept Bogdan’s feminist interpretation
of “The Painted Door” as valid and important. My point is rather
that the polysemous nature of art supports numerous valid perspectives,
none of which can claim sole authenticity. I repeat that I do not
mean to suggest that any interpretation will be acceptable. I also
refer again to my earlier distinction between two kinds of ideological
interpretations: one that accepts the polysemous nature of art (accepts
a variety of analyses of the archetypal image) and another that, from an
ideological perspective, asserts a work of art is inherently problematic
(asserts a single ‘correct’ analysis of the archetypal image).
I suggest that narrative form is no more inherently
patriarchal than musical form, and to suggest otherwise is to reify an
ideological perspective that does not recognize the polysemous nature of
art’s structure as well as art’s content. Not only is there a conflation
of the archetypal image and the archetype, there is also an assertion of
a single ‘True’ interpretation of the polysemous archetypal image.
I am not attempting to negate a feminist interpretation of literature in
general or this story in particular; I only seek to assert that any ideological
perspective goes too far when it states that the form or structure of a
work of art is inherently problematic. This perspective refuses to
acknowledge the symbolic and metaphoric nature of art. It takes one
interpretation of that which is symbolic and declares it to be the ‘Truth.’
Suggesting a work of literature is inherently patriarchal prevents any
other interpretation of the literature, and as I have shown with the sonata
form, it therefore restricts interpretations that may in fact even be amenable
to ideological critics. This kind of ideological criticism ignores the
symbolic nature of art and is a kind of hermeneutic bullying.
So there are two reasons that in the domain
of literary studies Frye gives a privileged position to what he calls the
myth rather than the ideology: ideology may not acknowledge the symbolic
nature of even the archetypal image, and, furthermore, it does not recognize
the distinction between the image and the archetype. Frye is not denying
the ideological context but rather emphasizing the structure within the
manifestation (the archetype), and he is doing so to create a field of
literary theory and criticism rather than ideological theory. The
distinction between the archetype and the archetypal image in Jungian archetypal
theory provides a means of further explicating Frye’s project and responding
to postmodern criticism. This point is at the crux of postmodern
criticism of Frye’s literary theory, and I think, has contributed significantly
to a marginalized role for archetypal literary studies in the academy as
a whole. I am not suggesting Bogdan is the sole voice articulating
such criticisms but rather that her presentation of them is an exemplar
of a larger trend. In this way, archetypal literary theory has, in
fact, suffered generally due to its specific and limited implementation
by Frye, who acted as its primary and most visible advocate in the academy.
Conclusion
Archetypal literary theory does not seek to
eradicate or ignore the particularities of any literary work (which include
its ideologies). In fact, it is in comparing the differences between
the particularities of this work and those of previous manifestations of
an archetypal image that interest and meaning is found for the archetypal
critic. The emphasis is not on the archetype nor on the archetypal
image, not on the myth nor on the ideology, but always on the relationship
between the two. In The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature, Jung
shows that the task of archetypal criticism is in considering the similarities
and differences between this archetypal image and previous archetypal images,
and in considering the symbolic implications of these affinities and variances.
My hope has not been to denigrate the
important advances made in feminist theory, which I support, but rather
to illustrate that archetypal theory reminds us that no ideological stance
can capture the potential of the human psyche nor contain the symbolic
nature of human expression. Frye reminds the reader that “no social
vision is ever definitive; there is always more outside it. The circle
of stories (or ocean of story, as it is called in India) is there to keep
us continually expanding and reshaping that vision” (Frye, “On Teaching
Literature,” 460). If I have been successful in articulating
my hypothesis, this work represents a means of utilizing archetypal literary
theories without disregarding a valuable contributions of postmodern critical
perspectives. I hope therefore, it has contributed somewhat to validating
the vital and powerful position of archetypal theory in contemporary literary
studies, and, perhaps, throughout the academy.
List of Works Cited
Bogdan, Deanne. Re-Educating the Imagination: Towards a Poetics,
Politics,
and Pedagogy of Literary Engagement.
Portsmouth, NH.:
Boynton-Cook/Heinemann,1992.
Bogdan, Deanne and Stanley Straw, eds. Beyond Communication:
Reading Comprehension and Criticism.
Portsmouth, NH:
Boynton-Cook/Heinemann, 1990.
Bogdan, Deanne, James E. Cunningham, and Hilary Davis. “Reintegrating
Sensibility: Situated
Knowledges and Embodied Readers.” New Literary
History, Vol. 31,
No. 3 (2000): 477-507.
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1957
-------. “Forming Fours.” The Hudson Review 4.4 (1958). 611-619.
-------. The Educated Imagination. Toronto, Ontario:
House of Anansi Press, Ltd., 1963.
-------. “The Social Importance of Literature.” Northrop Frye’s
Writings on
Education. CW 7. Eds. Jean O’Grady
and Goldwin French. Toronto, Ontario:
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-------. The Great Code. Toronto, Ontario: Penguin Books Canada
Ltd., 1981.
-------. “Humanities in a New World.” Divisions on a Ground: Essays
on Canadian
Culture. Ed. James Polk,
Toronto, Ontario: House of Anansi Press, 1982.
-------. The Critical Path. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester
Press, 1983.
-------. “Literature as a Critique of Pure Reason.” Descant 14.2
(1983). 7-21.
-------. Fables of Identity. San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1986.
-------. “Motive for Metaphor.” Modern Canadian Essays.
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-------. Creation and Recreation. Toronto, Ontario: University
of Toronto Press, 1980.
-------. Words with Power. Toronto, Ontario: Penguin Books Canada
Ltd., 1990.
-------. “Literature as Therapy.” The Eternal Act of Creation,
Essays 1979-1990.
Ed. Robert Denham. Indiana, Illinois: Indiana
University Press, (1989)1993.
-------. “On Teaching Literature.” Northrop Frye’s Writing on Education
CW
7 Eds.
Jean Grady and Goldwin French.
Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
------. Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks,1982-1991:Architecture
of the Spiritual
World, Vols. 5 and 6. Ed. Robert Denham.
Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto
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Jung, Carl. Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. London,
U.K.:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959.
-------. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books,
1961.
-------. Man and His Symbols. New York: Dell Publishing, 1964.
-------. “Psychology and Literature.” The Spirit in Man, Art,
and Literature.
Princeton, USA: Princeton University
Press, 1966.
-------. “On the Relation Between Analytical Psychology and Poetry.”
The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature.
Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press, 1966.
-------. The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. Princeton,
USA: Princeton University Press., 1966.
-------. Four Archetypes. Princeton, USA. Princeton University
Press, 1970 (1992).
-------. Psychology and Alchemy. London: Routledge
& K. Paul, 1974.
-------. On the Nature of the Psyche. Princeton, USA: Princeton
University Press, 1960 (1970).
Krysinski, Wladimir. “Frye and the Problems of Modernity.” The
Legacy of Northrop Frye.
Eds. Alvin A. Lee and Robert Denham. Toronto,
Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality.
Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
Rowland, Susan. Jung: A Feminist Revision. Cambridge,
UK: Polity Press/Blackwell
Publishers, Ltd., 2002.
Salusinsky, Imre. “Frye and Ideology.” The Legacy of Northrop
Frye. Eds. Alvin A. Lee
and Robert Denham. Toronto, Ontario: University
of Toronto Press, 1994.
Sayrs, Elizabeth. “Deconstructing McClary: Narrative, Feminine
Sexuality, and Feminism
in Susan McClary’s Feminine Endings.”
College
Music Symposium, 33-34, 1993-1994.
White, Hayden. “Frye’s Place in Contemporary Cultural Studies.”
The
Legacy of Northrop
Frye. Eds. Alvin A. Lee and Robert
Denham. Toronto, Ontario: University of
Toronto Press, 1994.
Willard, Thomas. “Archetypes of the Imagination.” The Legacy
of Northrop Frye.
Eds. Alvin A. Lee and Robert Denham. Toronto,
Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
Abbreviations
AC Anatomy of Criticism
WP Words with Power
FA Four Archetypes
OTNOTP On the Nature of the Psyche
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