Northrop Frye's theory of archetypes defines archetypes as recurring symbols or images in literature that can be recognized across works. Frye believed that by plotting important aspects of stories, patterns or archetypes would emerge that stories may diverge from but can be used to understand literature. He asserted that all narratives fall into four categories - comedy, romance, tragedy, and satire - each with six phases that overlap the categories before and after. Frye also linked these categories to seasons and explored how symbols are interpreted differently depending on the narrative category, such as animals being docile in comedy and predatory in tragedy.

1. Northrop Frye's
Theory of Archetypes
Compiled by
Dilip Barad
Dept. of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University (Gujarat – India)
dilipbarad@gmail.com
http://edweb.tusd.k12.az.us/dherring/ap/consider/frye/indexfryeov.htm

2. • Northrop Frye working in the field of literature
defined an archetype as a symbol, usually an
image, which recurs often enough in literature
to be recognizable as an element of one’s
literary experience as a whole.

3. • Another way of thinking about archetypes is to
imagine that in some way it is possible to plot
the important aspects of a story on to a graph.
• If enough points from several stories were
plotted, a pattern would start to appear.
• If one then drew a line that approximated the
pattern that emerged in the points, that best
fit line would be an archetype.

4. • No story perfectly matches the archetype, and
some stories will diverge from the archetype
more than others. Still, recognizing that a
pattern exists can be a powerful tool in
understanding and comparing literature.

5. • Northrop Frye asserts that all narratives fall
into one of four mythos. Each mythos has six
phases, sharing three with the preceding
mythos and three with the succeeding
mythos.

6. Mythos Grid
• Click to edit Master text styles
– Second level
– Third level
• Fourth level
– Fifth level

7. Six phases of each mythos
• http://edweb.tusd.k12.az.us/dherring/ap/consider

8. • Comedy is aligned with spring because the
genre of comedy is characterized by the birth
of the hero, revival and resurrection. Also,
spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and
darkness.

9. • Romance and summer are paired together
because summer is the culmination of life in
the seasonal calendar, and the romance genre
culminates with some sort of triumph, usually
a marriage.

10. • Autumn is the dying stage of the seasonal
calendar, which parallels the tragedy genre
because it is, (above all), known for the “fall”
or demise of the protagonist.

11. • Satire is metonymized with winter on the
grounds that satire is a “dark” genre. Satire is
a disillusioned and mocking form of the three
other genres. It is noted for its darkness,
dissolution, the return of chaos, and the
defeat of the heroic figure.

12. • The context of a genre determines how a
symbol or image is to be interpreted. Frye
outlines five different spheres in his schema:
human, animal, vegetation, mineral, and
water.

13. • The comedic human world is representative of
wish-fulfillment and being community
centered. In contrast, the tragic human world
is of isolation, tyranny, and the fallen hero.

14. • Animals in the comedic genres are docile and
pastoral (e.g. sheep), while animals are
predatory and hunters in the tragic (e.g.
wolves).

15. • For the realm of vegetation, the comedic is,
again, pastoral but also represented by
gardens, parks, roses and lotuses. As for the
tragic, vegetation is of a wild forest, or as
being barren.

16. • Cities, temples, or precious stones represent
the comedic mineral realm. The tragic mineral
realm is noted for being a desert, ruins, or “of
sinister geometrical images”

17. • Lastly, the water realm is represented by
rivers in the comedic. With the tragic, the
seas, and especially floods, signify the water
sphere.

18. Thank You!
www.exmaenglish.dilipbarad.com