Mythological and Archetypal Approach to Analyze Literature

According to the common misconception and misuse of the term, myths are merely primitive fictions, illusions, or opinions based upon false reasoning. Actually, mythology encompasses more than grade school stories about the Greek and Roman deities or clever fables invented for the amusement of children (or the harassment of students in college literature courses). It may be true that myths do not meet our current standards of factual reality, but then neither does any great literature. Instead, they both reflect a more profound reality. Myth is fundamental, the dramatic representation of our deepest instinctual life, of a primary awareness of man in the universe, capable of many configurations, upon which all particular opinions and attitudes depend (Guerin, 2005). Myth is to be defined as a complex of stories-some no doubt fact, and some fantasy-which, for various reasons, human beings regard as demonstrations of the inner meaning of the universe and of human life. Myths are by nature collective and communal; they bind a tribe or a nation together in common psychological and spiritual activities.

This approach emphasizes “the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works.” Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion, mythological criticism “explores the artist’s common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs.” One key concept in mythlogical criticism is the archetype, “a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response,” which entered literary criticism from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a “‘collective unconscious,’ a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person’s conscious mind”, often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood, archetypes according to Jung “trigger the collective unconscious”.

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See also:

• Critical Approaches to Study Literature
• Objective Approach
• Subjective Approach
• Historical Approach
• Biographical Approach
• Psychological Approach
• Mythological and Archetypal Approach
• The Formalist Approach

Psychological Approach to Analyze Literature

The aim of psychological study folds in three natures. Foremost, the objective of understanding behavior, that is by defining factors that combine the development and expression of behavior. Secondly, the psychologist striving to develop procedure for the accurate prediction of behavior. Thirdly, psychology aims at developing techniques that will permit the control of behavior that is, way of “ shaping”  or course of psychological development through manipulating those basic factors to the growth and the expression of behavior.

The psychological approach leads most directly to a substantial amplification of the meaning of a literary work. When we discuss psychology and its place in a literary work, we are primarily studying the author’s imagination. As all literary works are based on some kind of experience, and as all authors are human, we are necessarily caught up in the wide spectrum of emotional problems (caused by experience). Not all recourse of psychology in the analysis of literary work is undertaken to arrive at the understanding of the literary work, to a certain extent, we must be willing to use psychology to discuss probability.

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See also:

• Critical Approaches to Study Literature
• Objective Approach
• Subjective Approach
• Historical Approach
• Biographical Approach
• Psychological Approach
• Mythological and Archetypal Approach 
• The Formalist Approach

Biographical Approach to Analyze Literature

According to Christopher Russell Reaske, Biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts (education, work, relationships, and death), biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents the subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.

Biographical approach examines the literary work  in relation to the author’s life. And often a particular poem or song is subject to this kind of analysis simply by nature of its material in relation to the background of the author's personal experience. Or simply we can say, Biographical approach is an approach used to understand and comprehend a literary work by studying deeper about the life of the author. 

The good example of analysis by using this approach is the study of Emily's Chariot, since almost the whole contents of the poem tell about Emily's personal life.

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See also:

• Critical Approaches to Study Literature
• Objective Approach
• Subjective Approach
• Historical Approach
• Biographical Approach
• Psychological Approach
• Mythological and Archetypal Approach
• The Formalist Approach

Historical Approach to Analyze Literature

One of the most basic approach used in the analysis of literary work refers to the historical method of literary criticism. In line with this, (Russell 1966: 52) assures that the critic interprets the poem within the history, or contemporary frame of reference, behind the poem. In other words, Historical approach is one of the method to analysis literary work in which the author and the reader comprehend the message of the literary work by remembering the moment/historic moment a long with the literary work written.

It means that if one takes historical approach, he/she have to be willing to do the basic exclusion of all other approaches or at least he must not use any of the other approaches until this historical approach has exhausted.While those using the historical approach admit that a poem can mean something different to the readers of a later century, he still maintains that the original meaning is the only true one, and that it can be discovered only through historical analysis.

Interesting fact can be spelled out through a literary work. The literary work which fits best using this approach in the attempt to gain better and deeper understanding of the content is that the song 'Wind of Change' by Scorpion which presents the history of the WW II's ending. You'll never know the meaning of this song without knowing the history of WWII.
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See also:

• Critical Approaches to Study Literature
• Objective Approach
• Subjective Approach
• Historical Approach
• Biographical Approach
• Psychological Approach
• Mythological and Archetypal Approach 
• The Formalist Approach

Subjective Approach to Analyze Literature

The subjective approach to a literary work begins with personal interest in it. That is, when one has read a literary work he has encountered the statement of a certain experience. Then he wants to respond to that experience through a consideration of his own experience.

In the Frost poem, for example, one might, for subjective reasons, concludes that the speaker is an tired old man or a young man who feels tired when he considers how many years remained for him. A girl might, for subjective reasons, feels enough kinship to the speaker to decide it is a woman, rather than a man. Therefore,  subjective approach in a literary work is an approach to analyze a literary work from the point of view of the reader. So the interpretation is based on what is in reader’s mind or according to the experience felt by the reader.
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See also:

• Critical Approaches to Study Literature
• Objective Approach
• Subjective Approach
• Historical Approach
• Biographical Approach
• Psychological Approach
• Mythological and Archetypal Approach 
• The Formalist Approach

Critical Approaches to Study Literature

The study of literature, nowadays, has shifted the focus, from the elements terms to the criticism. The study of literary works is no longer only focused on the analysis of plot, setting, character, or symbolism but has been broader to the area of criticism. Criticism does not mean "finding fault with". In this study, literary criticism as an academic activity should be viewed as the expression of the writer's point of view of what is happening to the text. Here are some approaches used to study literature:

• Objective Approach
• Subjective Approach
• Historical Approach
• Biographical Approach
• Psychological Approach
• Mythological and Archetypal Approach
• The Formalist Approach  

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