Displacement And Circulation: A Study Of How The Northrop Frye’s Prototype Works

Since the publication of the book The Anatomy of Criticism,the theory of archetypal criticism has been widely disseminated,and has gradually become known as one of the three major contemporary Western literary theories,together with psychoanalytic criticism and structuralist criticism.As the most important proponent of archetypal criticism,Northrop Frye has naturally attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad.However,most of the studies only focus on how Frye’s archetypal criticism system is manifested and applied,but few are concerned with how the archetypes are actually produced and how they operate.Therefore,this paper will take the two modes of operation of Frye’s archetypes-displacement and circulation-as the object of study,and focus on the core idea that "literature is the displacement of myth".The paper firstly traces the theoretical origins of the concepts of displacement and circulation,from Freud’s theory of dream function,Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious,Frazer’s view of ritual recurrence and Lévi-Strauss’ s characteristics of mythic transformation thinking,and through the analysis of Spengler’s theory of historical circulation and Vico’s theory of poetic wisdom,it finds the theoretical origins of Frye’s thought of circulation,The second part of the book discusses these two modes of operation.This is followed by a specific discussion of how these two modes of operation are important supports for Frye’s archetypal structure.In the section on displacement,Frye argues that the two sets of contradictions between the collective unconscious and the individual consciousness,between morality and ethics and the desire to please people,constitute the causes of displacement and deformation;the changes and developments of the archetypes in terms of both form and content are the concrete manifestations of displacement;and the changes in the context and reality of the times and the collision and intermingling of different cultures are the two main factors that influence displacement.In the section on circulation,Frye uses mythology as a base to argue for the circular character of Western literature in terms of literary modes,literary language,and imagery and structure.It concludes with a discussion of the implications of displacement and circulation for literary creation,literary reception and literary criticism as specific operations of Frye’s archetypes.In conclusion,displacement and circulation are both fundamental to Frye’s maintenance of his archetypal system and essential to his ability to use dialectic to interrelate macroscopic literary structures with microscopic textual details.Through these two core concepts,Frye clarifies how archetypes are to work and how literature is to develop.His vision of literary criticism is centred on a ’backward-looking’methodology that grasps the structure of the archetype from a holistic perspective,constructs a traceable scientific system for art,and makes it clear that literary creation is a secondary creation of existing literary and life experiences based on the accumulation of knowledge.His prediction of the eventual return of mythology also provides a new perspective and direction for contemporary literary creation.