Construction Of Northrop Frye's Myth Theory From The Perspective Of Hermeneutics

With a grand view,Northrop Frye's myth theory includes literary criticism and cultural criticism.Previously,Frye's theoretical origins were concluded as Jung's psychology,Frazer's anthropology and Spengler's view of history.However,for one thing,Frye has mentioned the ideas of Ricoeur's hermeneutics in his theory for many times,and his archetypal criticism is inspired by Ricoeur's theory of metaphor.For another thing,Frye uses myth to interpret literature,nature and society,thus his theory has interpretative power,which embodies some hermeneutic ideas of Heidegger and Gadamer.This thesis concludes Frye's myth theory's research object,research method and research aim as archetype,holistic view and humanistic care respectively.Starting from the three key words,this thesis analyzes the construction of Frye's myth theory from the perspective of hermeneutics.The main body of this thesis consists of three chapters,discussing Frye's hermeneutic consciousness reflected in his myth theory from the perspectives of hermeneutics of Ricoeur,Gadamer and Heidegger respectively.The first chapter focuses on archetype and analyzes the influence of Ricoeur's theory of metaphor on archetypal criticism.Inspired by semantic innovation,Frye believes that archetype has multiple levels of meanings which will be continually displaced and expanded with the development of the times.Meanwhile,because literature is metaphorical,Frye extends metaphorical truth to literary truth and analyzes literature's function in reshaping the reality.Starting from holistic view,the second chapter discusses Gadamer's view of history embodied in Frye's criticism of literary history.Frye constructs literary criticism as an independent and scientific discipline and explores paradigm of literature in literary history,emphasizing the influence of prejudice and embodying fusion of horizons.Moreover,Frye thinks that interpretation has the feature of historicity.The meaning of the text is multiple and open,which is history of effect formed by the fusion of past horizon and current horizon.The third chapter pays attention to humanistic care and explores Heidegger's idea of Dasein reflected in Frye's cultural criticism.Focusing on Dasein,Frye puts forward the concepts of myth of concern and myth of freedom,and emphasizes the important function of myth in shaping social ideology.Starting from the two kinds of myths,Frye also discusses problems of technology and nature and social role of poets,which are in accordance with Heidegger's views.By clarifying Frye's theoretical construction from the perspective of hermeneutics,this thesis concludes that Frye possesses hermeneutic thinking.His myth theory is grand and open,and emphasizes functions of myth in interpreting the world and showing concern to human beings,which is a hermeneutic understanding of text and world with ontological significance.