A Study Of Mythological Archetypes Of Strindberg’s Plays

As the founder of modern Swedish literature and a representative of Nordic literature,Johann August Strindberg is known as the "father of modern world theater".The mytho-archetypal criticism that emerged in the 20 th century encompasses a variety of disciplines,including anthropology,psychology and philosophy,and is widely used in art criticism,using mythology as an entry point for interpreting artworks.Archetypal criticism first emerged in the fields of anthropology and psychology,and later made its way into literary criticism through the efforts of Canadian scholar Northrop Frye.Thus,archetypal theory was truly established by Frye.In his work The Anatomy of Criticism,Frye systematically expounds the theory of archetypal criticism and formally establishes the view of "archetypal criticism" with archetypes as the core,avoiding confusion with mythological studies.This paper examines the sources and influences of the mythological archetypes of Strindberg’s plays through the lens of archetypal criticism theory.At the same time,the narratological approach is applied to examine the narrative structure,affective mirror framework,characterization,and matrices of Strindberg’s theatrical archetypes.The paper consists of three parts: the introduction,the body,and the conclusion.The introductory part examines the significance and value of this study,reviews the current research status of this study,and explains the research methods and innovations.The first chapter mainly applies Frye’s theory of archetypal criticism to analyze the structure of Strindberg’s plays from the theatrical ontology.Through an in-depth analysis of the narrative structure,the contextual framework and the meanings produced in Strindberg’s plays,the study will explore the deconstruction and reconstruction of ancient Greek mythology and the Biblical stories in terms of dramatic structure.The second chapter focuses on the creation of characters from ancient Greek myths and Biblical stories,deforming and displacing the characters in the non-transferred texts to form their own re-creations.Starting from Frye’s archetypal theory,the characters in Strindberg’s plays can be divided into three categories: divinely inspired,demonic and naive.The portrayal of these three types of characters shows the mother themes of dramatic love and revenge,original sin and atonement,and death and rebirth,and raises the themes of dramatic works to a metaphysical level.The third chapter analyzes the achievements of Strindberg’s archetypes in his plays from two aspects: aesthetic value and cultural value,which are manifested in the exploration of the aesthetics of death and the inheritance of the spirit of the god of wine;in the cultural aspect,which is manifested in the coexistence of religious stance and anti-feudal church ideology and the transmission of the modern concept of family.At the same time,the displacement of mythological archetypes in his plays has inspired Edvard Munch,Eugene O’Neill and Ingmar Bergman.The concluding section summarizes Strindberg’s tracing and reconstruction of the archetypes from ancient Greek mythology and the Bible,mainly in terms of the reconstruction of the narrative structure,the deformation of the frame of the mood mirror and the displacement of the characters.The achievements brought by the archetypes in drama and the influence on other artists are also emphasized.The combination of Frye’s theory of mythological archetypes constructed according to Freud and Jung with Strindberg’s drama is of great value and significance in the current tide of literary research.The use of archetypal criticism theory to care for theater can open up the inner connection between theater and human culture and show the symbiosis between theater and human life.The care of the archetypal aspect in Strindberg’s drama is of great practical significance in summarizing the research methods of literary anthropology,examining the current situation of domestic research on Strindberg’s drama,considering some issues of drama in literary anthropology,and looking forward to the contemporary transformation and development direction of Strindberg’s drama research.