An Archetypal Study Of Robert Frost's Poems

Robert Frost is one of the most outstanding poets in America and all over the world. He won the Pulitzer Prize four times and received a large number of other commendations and honors so he became the nation's unofficial Poet Laureate. He was invited to read his poem at President Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. He has eight books of poetry that are very well-known. They are A Boy's Will, North of Boston, Mountain Interval, New Hampshire, West-Running Brook, A Further Range, A Witness Tree and Steeple Bush. These collections mark the achievement of his literary creation so he has always been the focus of innumerable critics since they were published. In his collections, we can find there are a great number of poems describing trees. There are trees in different seasons, there are different parts of trees and there are people who cut down trees. In this thesis, I try analyzing the meanings of trees from the viewpoint of archetype. At the same time, I also try expounding how trees influence the physical feelings of our ancestors. Gradually, the physical feelings store in the unconsciousness of our ancestors and is inherited to us. I divide my analysis into two parts. At first, I analyze the different parts of trees, namely, branches, barks, leaves and fruits because these different parts of trees influence the physical feelings of our ancestors and the physical feelings store in their unconsciousness and pass down to us by our DNA. Then, I focus my analysis on the trees in different seasons. At last, I try to study the relationship between the cut-down trees and people. Our ancestors treat trees as totem because they think trees have a perpetual life and trees represent the circle of life. Therefore, they connect themselves with trees and regard trees as their relatives and obtain the perpetual life of trees. Cutting down trees means shortening their own life so there are a large number of places in the world where people don't dare to cut down trees easily. The reason for their common behavior also may be explained by our ancestors. It is still because the physical feelings of our ancestors store in their unconsciousness and pass down to us by our DNA. In general, I study the meanings of trees from the viewpoint of biology because archetype is biological, rather than cultural.The thesis consists of four chapters. In Chapter One, I mainly introduce the life and literary career of Robert Frost, the poems about trees, the archetypal theory of Carl Jung and the critical theory of Northrop Frye. In Chapter Two, I try to study the archetypal meanings of trees. In Chapter Three, I focus on analyzing the trees in the poems on the basis of archetypal theory. In Chapter Four, I conclude the main findings of the thesis.