Focus:
I’ve been looking at Shakespeare’s works through Mythic and Archetypal Criticism (which I look into in my preliminary hub post). I have come up with 4 main myths in Shakespeare’s works, these are underlying beliefs that make up or even create Shakespeare’s world, and hence the worlds he creates.
I’ve been looking at Shakespeare’s works through Mythic and Archetypal Criticism (which I look into in my preliminary hub post). I have come up with 4 main myths in Shakespeare’s works, these are underlying beliefs that make up or even create Shakespeare’s world, and hence the worlds he creates.
- Magic (which includes a variety of things from witches to fairies to spirits in The Tempest like Ariel)
- Stars and Constellations
Archetypes are made from myths, they are specific patterns in a work. An example of this would be an earlier post I made that examined many of these archetypes. There are many, many archetypes that Shakespeare uses. Some other Archetypes I have identified are: Light and Dark, Witch, Blackness, Shadow, Hero, and Good and Bad.
Thesis:
Myths and Archetypes in Shakespeare’s works create a depth of understanding. There is underlying meaning that Shakespeare purposely includes in his plays, using his awareness of myths and archetypes. There are also myths and archetypes embedded in his plays which Shakespeare himself may not have been aware. Shakespeare’s plays evidence use of myths and archetypes to layer and interconnect the texts.
Conclusion:
I’ve found various articles that discuss Myths and Archetypes in Shakespeare. I found one website that particularly discussed Archetypes in Shakespeare. As Bert O. States discusses in his journal article “The Persistence of the Archetype”:
The lure of the myth . . . [is that] it enables us to put the outside on the inside, where nostalgia tells us it ought to belong. In criticism, it takes the form of a reverse colonization whereby we vigorously annex our literature to the past. If we end with nothing of our own, we inherit all of history, which is to say that history somehow inhabits us – thanks to the persistence of the archetype. (333)
Not only do we learn beliefs and customs from the past through myths and archetypes, but we learn rules of our own world now, seeing how we have been effected and changed by these underlying beliefs and patterns. By being aware of myths and archetypes we are better able to understand Shakespeare’s world as well as our own.
Bibliography
States, Bert O. "The Persistence of the Archetype." Critical Inquiry 7.2 (1980): 333-344. Print. 