ABSTRACT
Opening with a Jungian literary criticism of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813), Chapter 2 explores how the Jungian unconscious can offer new insights into the literary canon by exploring an author celebrated for rationality. And yet, the unconscious as unawareness and incompleteness haunts Elizabeth Bennet, Mr Darcy, Mr Bingley and Jane Bennet as they struggle with misunderstanding in romance. Fortunately, the unconscious as generative and purposeful enables them to change and find each other. The novel is visionary rather than psychological in its contribution to cultural change by drawing on archetypal criticism via Persephone and Demeter in its characters. This chapter then examines Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections and essays ‘On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry’ (1922), and ‘Psychology and Literature’ (1930). It introduces further reading in Jungian Literary Criticism 1920-1980, by Jos van Meurs, 1988; Jungian Literary Criticism, edited by Richard P. Sugg (1992); Post-Jungian Criticism: Theory and Practice, edited by James S. Baumlin, Tita French Baumlin, George H. Jensen, 2004; before ending in transdisciplinarity as founded by Basarab Nicolescu in From Modernity to Cosmodernity 2004. Transdisciplinarity, arguably anticipated by Jung, is the most socially liberating framework for Jungian literary criticism.
