Northrop Frye's Archetypes of Literature
This post is in response to the questions asked here 1) Archetypal criticism aims at establishing a unified body of literature by studying the recurrent signs and symbols of literary texts, i.e Archetypes, from which the theory derives its name. In critical study, an archetype denotes all those images, plots, techniques, etc, which are used in literary compositions through the ages and have thus helped in the shaping of the individual's perspective towards literary texts. 2) Northrop Frye's Archetypes of Literature, provided a structural study of literature and its recurrent themes, techniques, symbols, etc in order to establish "literature as an organized body of knowledge and to distinguish it from its study i.e criticism". Just as Physics is the study of nature, criticism is the study of literature. However, one can't possibly 'learn literature'. And therefore through this analogy Frye tries to prove that in order to establish literature a...