ABSTRACT
C. G. Jung is even more explicit about the perils of interpretation in an essay on poetry. He says that psychology may not presume to “explain” literature because there is no unifying principle in the psyche that would warrant it. More subtly, the novel belongs to that sort of modern art which takes on some of the qualities of this disease to challenge and heal an alienated modern world. Modern art, Jung realizes, is breaking up traditions of meaning and representation because they no longer work in the chaotic modern world. Developments in poetry, film, literature and so on are simultaneously creative experiments that result in art works and in presentations of new theories of aesthetics. Many Jungian theories of art reception have been developed, from John Beebe’s founding essay, “The Trickster in the Arts,” to Don Fredericksen, John Izod, and Terrie Waddell on film, as well as Terence Dawson and Susan Rowland on the novel.
