Analyses On Le Clézio Novels With Myth And Archetypal Criticism

Myths were declared disappeared by the western rationalism in the19thcentury,while it was revived in the20th century. Large numbers of modernist writers havecreated enormous literature works with theory of myths, such as Joyce, Eliot, andFaulkner. Myths showed what were called "the displacement" in literature of the latercontinuation, which were restated, reconstructed, and even parodied continuously. Asone of the most influential literary critical theories, Myth and Archetypal criticismproposed a new view on literature studies. This theory consciously learned fromcultural anthropology and put the theory into practice, trying to find the images,narrative structures and characteristic types in literature and identify the basic formsbehind myths. Therefore, a series of archetypes were widely used in the analyses,interpretations and evaluations of the literature works, presenting a new perspective ofliterary studies.This paper attempts to provide a new perspective of the modern French writerLe Clézio’s novels in the approach of myth and archetypal criticism. The introductionwill explain the translation of works, present study statuses and methods. The Paperhas three parts: the first part illustrates the origin of the myths in his novels, whichwill be followed by analyzing on Le Clézio’ novels with myths and archetypalcriticism, the last chapter will be the mythical revelation of his novels. The first part isbased on the mythology deriving from the background of Western culture, trying toexplore the myths embodied in the novels of Le Clézio and claims the writer’snon-Western Center and anthropological perspective. The second part will analyze thenovel combining with the texts with the comparative theory of myths and thearchetypal theory. The image archetype, the plot archetype, the character archetypesand the theme archetype will be researched particularly in this paper. In the last part,Le Clézio’s novels’ exerting elevation to people will be presented—animism and theconception of life cycle. With the help of natural and female writers’ reflecting on theadvances in technology, this paper expresses Le Clézio’s considerations aboutpeople’s cultural identity and national identity with his own experience.