The Bible And Frye’s Mythical-archetypal Criticism

Northrop Frye(1912-1991)was one of the most influential critics and theorists in the1950 s and 1960 s.As a theorist with a strong religious atmosphere,he has a lot of research on the Christian doctrine the Bible.In Frye’s theory,neither of his two main theoretical cores,"myth" and " archetype",can exist independently of the Bible,just as the Bible cannot exist independently of the entire Western civilization.In the process of studying the poems of William Black,a famous English poet,Frye discovered that the mythological system in Black’s poems is closely related to the Bible,and his creation has gone beyond the times and has a unique charm,but It is shocking that such a great poetry could not find a suitable literary theory to explain it.So he began to focus on the relationship between the Bible and literature in the 1980 s,and tried to build a new theoretical system to accommodate such great poetry,therefore,most of Frye ’s works in the later period are centered on the Bible,such as The Great Code: the Bible and Literature and Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “the Bible and Literature”.The study of the relationship between the Bible and literature occupies an important position in Frye ’s writings.He believes that the Bible is a vast collection of myths,so it can have such a huge influence on the creation of later literature.Frye believes that there are many archetype of Western literature in the narrative mode and imagery of the Bible,and as a whole influence the imagination of later generations.In other words,Frye ’s Mythical-archetypal Criticism is essentially derived from the Bible,and Frye added some supplements to the Mythical-archetypal Criticism in the process of studying biblical literature based on the Mythical-archetypal Criticism.Therefore,this article attempts to discuss the relationship between Frye’s Mythical-archetypal Criticism and the Bible by combining three main works of Frye,Fearful Symmetry:A Study of William Blake,Anatomy of Criticism and The Great Code: the Bible and Literature.This article is divided into five chapters.The introduction part gives a briefintroduction to Frye as the background of his thought development,summarizes the domestic and foreign research results on Frye,and briefly introduces the research methods of this article.The second chapter takes Fearful Symmetry:A Study of William Blake as the main research text,starting from Black as an "obstacle" in cultural history,and discusses the starting point of Frye’s reconstruction of literary theory and his new views on literary theory.The third chapter mainly combines the ideological theory in Analysis of Criticism,and analyzes the influence of the Bible on the criticism of Frye’s Mythical-archetypal Criticism.It mainly contains three aspects,one is the overall concept in the Bible,and the other is the imagery from God,Monster image and analogy image exemplify the types and characteristics of archetypes in the Bible,and three discuss the archetypal narrative structure in Frye’s theory.The fourth chapter analyzes The Great Code: the Bible and Literature and discusses the research results of Frye’s research on biblical literature from mythology,language,metaphor and typology.Finally,the conclusion part reviews the research content of the whole article,and briefly evaluates the value and limitations of Frye’s theory.In general,the development of Frye ’s literary theory is reflected in these three works with the continuous deepening of the study of the Bible.Fearful Symmetry : A Study of William Blake shows the source of thought of Frye ’s literary theory,that is,in the process of studying the relationship between Black and the Bible,he discovered that a great poet like Black has become an obstacle in the history of culture.Construct a new literary theory system to interpret Black and other great poets.Later in the Anatomy of Criticism,he put forward the most important academic achievement in his life-the myth prototype theory in the framework of the Bible.Finally,he analyzed the myth prototype theory in the The Great Code: the Bible and Literature by analyzing the Bible.It was further supplemented.