An Analysis Of One Hundred Years Of Solitude From The Perspective Of Archetypal Criticism

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombian writer, whose writing language is Spanish. Asa talented widespread-won praise novelist, he combined realism and fantasy together tocreate a changeable fabulous history of Colombia and the South American continent. Oneof his masterpieces One Hundred Years of Solitude is recognized as the mostrepresentative work of the magic realism, which is also a high-quality competitiveproduct that should not be missed in the twentieth century modern literature. This pieceof work is honored as “A magnum opus reproduced the history of Latin America socialpanorama.” The work of One Hundred Years of Solitude had caused “a Literature Boom”since it was published in the western literature. It depicts the rough experience withmagical colors of seven generations of the Buendía and the history of Macondo, a smalltown developed from construction, development, prosperity to extinction for more thanone hundred years. After experiencing living and dying as well as being in the process ofprosperity and decline, it is the right story showing the miniature of the Columbia andeven the Latin American historical and social changes, which reflects the historicalevolution and the social reality of both Columbia and the whole mainland in LatinAmerica.One Hundred Years of Solitude gathered the incredible miracles and the purest reallife with its complicated content, numerous figures, bizarre plot and innovative technique.Its fictional background was cited in a small town called Macondo, in which, the realityand the myth intermingled with each other in an atmosphere like the author’sgrandmother telling a story about the destiny of seven generations of the Buendía familywithin herself. In the meantime, when telling about the myth story of Buendía family, theauthor also uses a good deal of words to describe the changes of Macondo, during whichperiod the novel is filled with the biblical embodiments of the archetype theory. Theauthor used a large number of mocks about the stories in The Bible and the miraclestories in The Arabian Nights as well. This thesis, makes an analysis of the images inOne Hundred Years of Solitude from the perspective of archetype theory, in order to dig out the archetype theory reflected in this novel, and quest for the theoretical and practicalsignificance of the biblical archetype theory.This thesis is comprised of three parts: Introduction, Body and Conclusion. Themain contents are as follows:The first part is Introduction. In this part, a main brief description about GabrielGarcia Marquez’s works, the relevant comments and his literary achievements are given.The background of One Hundred Years of Solitude is stated. Criticisms on this novelfrom both domestic and overseas literature circles as well as the studies scholars didabout this work are reviewed. All of the elements talked above point out the possibilitythat this novel can be analyzed from the perspective of archetype theory. In recent years,some of the literary critics from both domestic and overseas try to read, re-interpret andreconstruct archetype theory from some other perspective, they have studied therelationship between archetypal theory and cultural researches as well as othercontemporary critical theories, especially the problems about holistic cultural criticismtendency relationship and the enlightenment effects to the current cultural criticism. Sothat the influence of archetype theory can be a more far-reaching one, what is more, theresearch significance of this thesis can be stretched out.The second part is the main body of this thesis, which consists of three chapters.The first chapter gradually spreads out from two aspects: in the first place, it gives a briefintroduction about the concept, origin, present research direction of the archetype theory,then tells the future development trend of the archetype theory, and finally shows clearlyabout the influence that the archetype theory has on both literary history and the laterliterary works. Archetypal criticism is trying to find out the basic backing forms of allsorts of images, narrative structures and character types, etc. which often appear in theliterature works; in the second place, it points out how the archetype theory is reflected inOne Hundred Years of Solitude from the angle of ancient Greek mythology, The Bible,and traditional folk stories. This part is about the archetypal analysis of the maincharacters in One Hundred Years of Solitude, at the same time, this thesis will also givean explanation about how the archetype theory is used by the author on each character in this world classic novel.The second chapter mainly discusses the archetypal images in the novel. There are anumber of the application of archetype theory in British and American literature works,among which the flexible usage of archetypal images is included. The layout of thischapter is to put forward an archetypal analysis on the main images in this piece of work,in which exists a large number of images. They cover the novel with a layer ofmysterious color. In this thesis, recurring images are interpreted with the concept of thearchetype theory, so as to play a role of deepening the theme.The third chapter focuses on digging the application of archetypal narration in thework. Both narrative structure and the narrative style in the novel are subject to theinfluence of archetype theory, and have their unique significance, thus to reveal the deepconnotation of the novel. This thesis systematically analyses the different types ofnarrative structures in One Hundred Years of Solitude, which absolutely renders a betterservice for the novel in order to promote its artistic charm, and discerns the uniquecreative thinking and skills of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.The third part is the ending part of the thesis. This part takes a further summaryabout the use and meaning of the archetype critical theory in the novel, finally revealshow the archetypes combined with the literary images in the process of literary creationand its historical significance. The biblical archetype theory is used in novel to show itscritiques and analyses, this part draws a systematic conclusion to the discusses andanalysis of the whole thesis. The representations of the historical archetypes, not only letthe readers understand the novel from another aspect, but also let them have a brand newthinking about the history as well as the reality. In addition, the thesis also points out itsproblem that still needs continuous improvement and further researches. The novelintegrates and surpasses all his previous fictions, accordingly creates a double worldwhich is filled with an extreme fertility. It exhausts the world, at the same time exhaustsitself, opening a door to the development of Latin American and the western novels andart.