Department of English and American Studies Mythical and Cultural Archetypes in JRR Tolkien 2011

80 Pages·2011·0.58 MB·English

Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

Miluše Jedlinská

Mythical and Cultural Archetypes in
J.R.R. Tolkien
Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Michael Matthew Kaylor, Ph.D.

2011
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..
Author’s signature
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I would like to thank Michael Matthew Kaylor, Ph.D., for his valuable advice.

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Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 5
THE DEFINITIONS OF ARCHETYPE .................................................................................................................. 7
ARCHETYPAL APPROACH TO LITERATURE ..................................................................................................... 9
THE MONOMYTH......................................................................................................................................... 13
THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES ......................................................................................................................... 16
NORTHROP FRYE’S TYPES OF HERO ............................................................................................................. 19
2. THE ARCHETYPAL JOURNEYS OF TOLKIEN’S HEROES ................................................. 21
TRAGIC HEROES, FAILED QUESTS ................................................................................................................ 22
What is the role of fate? ............................................................................................................................... 23
Fëanor ......................................................................................................................................................... 25
Túrin Turambar ........................................................................................................................................... 26
BEREN AND LÚTHIEN .................................................................................................................................. 28
EÄRENDIL ................................................................................................................................................... 33
GANDALF .................................................................................................................................................... 36
BILBO .......................................................................................................................................................... 42
ARAGORN ................................................................................................................................................... 48
FRODO......................................................................................................................................................... 54
The Monomyth pattern in Frodo’s journey .................................................................................................. 54
Frodo’s journey seen through Jungian perspective ..................................................................................... 63
The Christian perspective ............................................................................................................................ 64
Six stages of Frodo’s transformation: loosing consciousness ..................................................................... 64
3. TWO IMPORTANT ARCHETYPES IN THE WORK OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN ......................... 68
Water ........................................................................................................................................................... 69
Tree .............................................................................................................................................................. 71
4. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 73
APPENDIX A - LIST OF CHARACTERS ........................................................................................................... 75
WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED .................................................................................................................. 77
RÉSUMÉ ...................................................................................................................................................... 79
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1. Introduction
It has been perceived by some critics and readers that there are certain
similarities between Tolkien’s fiction and various mythical (and other kinds of) stories.
For most critics the logical explanation is 1) either that Tolkien consciously used
mythical elements as he was very well acquainted with them, or 2) that he used these
elements unconsciously, not on purpose. For these reasons, some people do not consider
his fiction as being original. This thesis suggests that there is another explanation: the
similarities between Tolkien’s stories and mythology are caused by mythical and
cultural archetypes. This interpretation has an advantage of going deeper than
considering conscious usage of mythology in literature, and even deeper than the
unconscious remembering of what one read or heard in the past: the archetypes
originate in the collective unconscious. It is true that certain writers and film-makers
now use archetypes consciously, drawing on the ‘manual’ that was provided by Joseph
Campbell and other writers going in his steps (such as Christopher Vogler), but that was
not the case at the time when Tolkien was writing his major works.
Furthermore, the widespread success of Tolkien’s work can be accounted for by
the archetypal structure of his stories. Tolkien created his legendarium as a background
for his invented languages (most importantly Quenya and Sindarin), because, according
to him, a language which does not have a mythological background is always deficient
in some respect. Another reason for his success might be that after the rule of everymen
and anti-heroes in literature (realism, modernism), there arose again a need for stories
about heroes with divine qualities. Northrop Frye’s scheme of literature had come full
circle, back to superhuman heroes, only this time more modern and secular.
Although the success was a surprise even for Tolkien himself, he concluded that there
was an audience for this kind of literature: “But it remains an unfailing delight to me to
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find my own belief justified: that the ‘fairy-story’ is really an adult genre, and one for
which a starving audience exists” (Letters 209).
Although Tolkien did not want his stories to be dissected by scholars and become the
subjects of research and theses, there is one thing at which he looked with more friendly
eyes:
I fear you might be right that the search for the sources of The Lord of the
Rings is going to occupy academics for a generation or two. I wish this need
not be so. To my mind it is the particular use in a particular situation of any
motive, whether invented, deliberately borrowed, or unconsciously
remembered that is the most interesting thing to consider. (Letters 418)
It is precisely these motives ‘unconsciously remembered’ that this thesis concentrates
on.
The first part deals with the numerous approaches to archetypes and provides a
brief history of archetypal criticism in literature. There are also reasons stated why it is
better to choose this kind of approach for the analysis of Tolkien’s work over other
types of approaches. The second part deals with Joseph Campbell’s theory of
monomyth and its relation to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion,
with occasional digressions to Jungian psychology and archetypal criticism, as
presented by Northrop Frye. The main focus is on tracing the archetypal structure in the
paths of the following heroes: Beren and Lúthien, Eärendil, Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn
and Bilbo.
The most important reference works used are: The Hero with a Thousand Faces
by Joseph Campbell, The Archetypes of Collective Unconscious by C.G. Jung, Anatomy
of Criticism: Four Essays by Northrop Frye, Tolkien in the Land of Heroes by Anne C.
Petty and J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia by Michael D. C. Drout.
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The Lord of the Rigs is further on referred to as FOTR – The Fellowship of the Ring,
TTT – The Two Towers, and ROTK – The Return of the King.
The reader is expected to be well acquainted with the listed works of Tolkien and their
complexity.

The definitions of archetype
In general, archetype is viewed as a recurring pattern, image, character or theme
which appears in mythologies and literatures across different cultures and nations.
However, each critic/scholar has his/her own definition, depending on his/her area of
expertise (psychology versus literature), and clings to one of the many possible
explanations of the origin of archetypes.
C.G. Jung (1875 – 1961) explained the archetypes as contents of the collective
unconscious (a deep layer of psyche not derived from personal experience), and
remarked that the first theories regarding archetypes were those of Plato and St.
Augustine (although the term itself is of much later origin). The archetype as such is
only a hypothetical model, similar to the ‘patterns of behaviour’ in biology (Jung 5).
The archetype is the psychic content that has not been yet submitted to the conscious
mind. Most of the archetypes can be found everywhere and at all times. However, the
archetype is not an ‘unconscious idea’ for which it is often considered. This is because
its content is not determined, only its form. “For Jung the archetypes taken as a whole
represent the sum of the latent potentialities of the human psyche - a vast store of
ancestral knowledge about the profound relations between God, man, and cosmos”
(Jacobi 49). The archetype is changed when it becomes conscious and is perceived; it
becomes coloured by the person in whose consciousness it appears. Owing to his
studies of dreams, myths, fantasies and visions, Jung was able to trace certain types of
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figures and situations that were constantly repeating – these he termed as ‘motifs’. The
human figures in dreams, mythology and literature can be embodiments of one of the
series of archetypes, of which the main ones are: the shadow, the wise old man, the
child, the mother, anima and animus.
The approach of Northrop Frye (1912 – 1991) to the archetypes was very
different from Jung’s (owing to the fact that Frye was a literary critic, not a
psychologist). Frye intended to set a ‘conceptual framework’ for literature – to discover
what were the organizing and containing forms of literature and to create a critical
approach which did not work only with sources external to literature (i.e. biographies,
historical facts), but also with internal structure of literature. Frye considered the
archetypes as representations of conventional myths and metaphors and viewed
literature as the most important extension of mythology. According to him, archetypes
were shaped by historical and social factors and were not a priori forms in the human
mind. Nonetheless, they retained continuity of form in literature. Primarily, they were
communicable symbols, which accounted for the fact that the same archetypes can be
found across language and cultural barriers (Anatomy 121). The archetypes appear in
primitive and popular literature in particular – or in other words, this kind of literature
provides an unobstructed view of archetypes. However, Frye said that this quality can
be found on every level of literature – from myths, fairy tales, The Bible, to Shakespeare
and beyond (and also in a large amount of what he termed ‘rubbish’) (Anatomy 130).
Joseph Campbell (1904 – 1987) was largely influenced by Jung. He saw the
archetypes as universal themes and motifs of the human mind appearing in mythology,
literature and dreams: “Dream is the personalized myth, myth is the depersonalized
dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of
the psyche” (The Hero 18). Campbell focused mainly on the archetypal story of the
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hero’s journey, for which he started to use the term ‘monomyth’. According to him, the
standard mythological adventure follows the basic pattern of rites of passage (and vice
versa), which is: departure, initiation and return. In each stage Campbell identified
typical sequence of events and typical motifs (certainly not all of them occur in all the
myths and stories).

Archetypal approach to literature
According to Longman Glossary of Literary Terms, archetypal criticism is: “A
type of literary criticism that focuses on particular archetypes, narrative patterns,
themes, motifs, or characters that recur in a particular literary work or in literature in
general”.
The Archetypal criticism has its roots in anthropology (James Frazer, Claude Lévi-
Strauss), psychology (C.G. Jung), formalism (Vladimir Propp) and its unique branch
consists in the work of Northrop Frye.
Although archetypal criticism started to emerge only in the 1930s, some time
after Jung began to publish his works, there were earlier attempts to apply this approach
to literature and mythology. For example the Austrian psychologist Otto Rank (1884 –
1939) published in 1909 the book called The Myth of the Birth of Hero, which traces the
common aspects surrounding the birth of the hero in mythologies of different cultures
(Greek, Persian, Indian, Celtic, Roman and so on). Rank clung to the theory that the
common elements in myths are caused by the common traits of the human psyche.
Approximately at the same time, the Scottish anthropologist James Frazer was working
on his major book, The Golden Bough, which compared mythological and religious
beliefs in ancient cultures. This book has been very influential among writers and
literary critics. Frazer was the first to include ‘Christian mythology’ in comparison with
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the other mythologies, showing that there were many common themes. The readers at
the time were scandalized, but not long afterwards such a comparison started to be
accepted and used by other scholars. Northrop Frye even wrote in 1950s that:
…there’s nothing in the bible that can’t be found in some form - or to which
some analogy cannot be found - in some mythology folklore elsewhere. But we
could reverse the axiom and say that there is nothing really essential in the
folklore or mythology of any civilization whatever that cannot be found in
some form in the Bible. (Biblical Myths 43)
In 1934 Maud Bodkin published her Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, which is considered
to be the first real piece of archetypal criticism. In this book, Bodkin applied the
theories of C.G. Jung to literature and examined, for example, the archetypes of rebirth,
heaven, hell, hero, etc.
Since then there was an increasing interest in archetypal criticism up till the end of
1960s, when the interest started to decline.
Nonetheless, the archetypal approach is a good choice for analysis of Tolkien’s work.
Tolkien himself wrote:
These tales [The Silmarillion] are ‘new’, they are not directly derived from
other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of
ancient wide-spread motives or elements. After all, I believe that legends and
myths are largely made of ‘truth’, and indeed present aspects of it that can only
be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind
were discovered and must always reappear. (Letters 147)
He also said: “My work is not a ‘novel’, but an ‘heroic romance’ a much older and quite
different variety of literature” (Letters 414).
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