A Study Of The Transmission Of Biblical Archetypes In Western Literature From Archetypal Memetics Perspective

Archetypal criticism is one of the most influential schools in western literature criticism which explores and explains the common laws of literature from a microscopy. However it could not scientifically explain how archetype is originated and how it is preserved during the long history. As a product of the combination of archetypal criticism and memetics, archetypal memetics provides good possibility for helping archetypal criticism out of its problem.Guided by this archetypical memetics theory, this thesis tries to explore the transmission of biblical archetypical memes in western literature. And during this process, the author attempts to find the answers to the two questions:1) what makes an archetype become an archetype?2)what makes an archetype sustain?The method employed in this thesis is corpus approach. First, the author collected all concerned papers on biblical archetypes from CNKI and formed a database. There are 85 dissertations in all involving 67 archetypes. Then the author categorized these archetypes into five groups: characters, images, structures, themes and stories. During each group of memes, there are strong memes and relatively weaker memes. Finally the author gave an interpretation to each group of archetypical memes.Through the exploration of the transmission of biblical archetypical memes in western literature, it is found that archetype is formed through imitation of nature. The reason why almost all great literature works involve some archetypes is that each archetype is a reflection o f nature and therefore also a reflection of human who are living in the nature. Archetypes are the best way to arouse human's deep feeling in the soul.An archetype sustains through imitation of classics. In this term, every archetype is a meme. It reproduces itself through assimilation, retention, expression and transmission. This thesis creatively explores archetypal criticism from a new perspective and successfully proves the interpreting ability of archetypal memetics through a corpus study on the transmission of biblical archetypal memes in western literature.