ABSTRACT

Chapter 5 examines archetypes in literary genre. Both the existence of genres (in literature) and the idea of archetypes (in Jung) imply that patterns of relating in art are psychically constituted. If so, they are inherited in one of three ways: by cultural transmission and education, by innate psychic propensities, or thirdly, and mostly likely, by both culture and psyche working together in writers and readers. Aspects of individuation are communicated by Jung by suggesting typical archetypes of shadow, anima and animus, trickster, self; each offering a lens for genre criticism. The chapter studies lyric, tragedy, comedy and epic in depth. Case studies of Dead Water by Barbara Hambly and Frederica by Georgette Heyer find archetypes in detective fiction and romance. Jung’s essay on the trickster is explored for its shadow and culture criticism; John Beebe’s ‘The Trickster in the Arts’ is celebrated for its psychological depth and James Hillman’s Re-Visioning Psychology provides post-Jungian incisiveness on literary genre. After Jungian literary criticism by Rinda West, Bettina L. Knapp and Annis Pratt, the chapter concludes with showing how Nicolescu’s transdisciplinarity is strongly echoed by the relationship of science to Izdubar in Jung’s The Red Book or Liber Novus.