Archetypal Literary Criticism and Structuralism

The study of literature from the point of view of the search for archetypal images and the study of artistic creativity from the standpoint of structuralism are two important trends. Both of these trends have emerged in the contexts of different scientific paradigms. The origin of archetypal criticism is associated with the figure of Herman Northrop Fry, and the basis of archetypal criticism is psychology, namely the concept of psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. While the origin of structuralism is associated with linguistics and the name of Ferdinand de Saussure, who first began to consider language as a system of signs in which each element defines other elements and is itself determined by them. With all the difference in origin, in general, both theories do not contradict each other – on the contrary, they complement each other. Archetypal literary criticism and structuralist theory of art have deep internal theoretical connections in several ways: both theories look for repetitive elements in literature, both consider literature as a space of memory about the past. Archetypal literary criticism and the structuralist theory of art direct the appeal to the psychology of man as the creator of works of art. Both directions are also largely based on the idea of binary oppositions: within the framework of the archetypal criticism of the pair, many archetypes are grouped into pairs, whereas within the framework of structuralism, the idea of structure itself is based on elementary concepts opposed to each other; finally, both methods have been criticized for the same shortcomings, such as the denial of author subjectivity and the denial of human progress. This article attempts to show that the theory of archetypes in literature and the structuralist theory of art complement each other, and how exactly this complementarity is achieved.

literary criticism, archetype, structuralism, repetition, integrity, complementarity, Flaw, both, memory, psychology