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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Hub Post: Mythological and Archetypal Criticism

I've been looking at Shakespeare's plays through Mythological Criticism and Archetypal Criticism, which I explained in one of my earlier posts.  Shakespeare's plays have some very interesting underlying stories and beliefs.

Some major myths are:

There are also some very interesting archetypes which Shakespeare uses.   One example would be his connection of 'black' to bad in his plays, contrasting good and evil.

I'm going to be looking at different conventions Shakespeare uses in Myths and Archetypes.  Many times Myths in Shakespeare are not beliefs we share with Shakespeare's characters, such as belief in Apollo.  Frequently Archetypes are harder to notice, as two things seem logically connected, but are actually only connected in our minds.  I also want to look into different criticisms such, as Carl Jung and his shadow archetype.

Through Myths and Archetypes we are able to find a richer deeper world inside of Shakespeare's plays, realizing social constructions and beliefs that help us realize the world we have created around ourselves.  As well as using many of these constructions, Shakespeare also contributes to them, including ideas such as 'star-crossed lovers.'

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I'm really interested in seeing how your research turns out! I'm kind of a mythology nerd (totally took the National Mythology Exam twice in high school) so I find this stuff fascinating. One thing I think would be interesting would be to see if Shakespeare changed the mythological stories to suit his own purpose. I know a lot of other authors did this, using the gods as types instead of actual beings with a story. Like, "Aphrodite is the goddess of love so even though it makes no sense chronologically or in reference to her other stories I'm going to have her..." insert action here.

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