A Study Of Invisible Man From The Perspective Of Archetypal Criticism

This thesis analyzes Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from the perspective ofarchetypal criticism. It studies the displacement of classical western archetypalcharacters, settings, objects, numbers, processes and events in the novel.Invisible Man is one of the classics of the20thcentury American literature. Thenovel gained nationwide attention and was highly praised by literary critics as soon asit was published in1952. Through its constant application of archetypes, InvisibleMan explores the common human dilemma in terms of survival, as well as the motifof death and rebirth. In his “Tradition and Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot mentionedthe historical and aesthetic aspects of literary creation, which Ellison combinedskillfully in writing his Invisible Man. It is this great tradition of classical westernliterary as well as Ellison’s individual talent that breeds his world-famous masterpiece.Studies on Invisible Man from the perspective of archetypal criticism are still far fromthorough and systematic. Hopefully by interpreting the novel’s employment ofclassical archetypes, this thesis can decipher the deep structure of the novel, achievinga better understanding of it on a literary anthropological level. Meanwhile, thearchetypal perspective helps to reveal how the writer constructs his novel according tohis sound grasp of western literary classics, how he establishes the novel’s intensityand thematic depth through archetypes, and why the novel is worth our intensivestudy and obtains sympathy far and wide. There are altogether four chapters in this thesis. Chapter One gives a briefintroduction to Ralph Ellison’s literary career, his masterpiece Invisible Man, as wellas the development and application of archetypal theory in literature. Chapter Twocovers the study of archetypal images in Invisible Man. Chapter There focuses on thestudy of archetypal processes and events in the novel. Chapter Four concludes themain findings of the thesis, limitation of it, and suggestions on the study of InvisibleMan in some other respects.