A Study On The Centaur From The Perspective Of The Myth-Archetype

As a great contemporary American writer, John Updike has been well received by the readers. His works have been widely read and discussed at home and abroad. Most of his novels and stories are written in a well-modulated extraordinary beauty and dazzling fluidity. Marriage, divorce, religion and sex are the major subjects in his works, and he especially shows lots of solicitude for the domestic life of the American middle class.This paper applies the archetypal criticism of Fletcher, Jung and Frye to analysis Updike’s novel The Centaur. Archetypal criticism is an important western criticism genre. Through the analysis this paper tries to find the character types, symbol and imagery, find out the basic form of hidden behind, namely literature prototype, and applies to the analysis and evaluation of works. This dissertation attempts to analyze how Updike employs the mythological archetypes in The Centaur, how he uses the archetypal myth as the framework of The Centaur and how he tries to set forth the problems of American world.There are many kinds of parallels between The Centaur and The Greek Myth (Chiron myth) with the critical theory from Frye in this paper, such as Chiron’s image and Caldwell’s constellation, the temple of Olympus and the Olinger town. Through the comparison between the two works, there are some extensions of The Centaur based on the myth-archetype.Altogether this paper consists of four chapters. Chapter one is the introduction which mainly about the novel and the author, the literature review and the introduction to myth archetypal criticism. Chapter two compared The Centaur and the archetypal myth in order to find the parallels in characters, symbols and narrative modes between them. Chapter three studies how The Centaur inherits the archetypal myth. It is endowed with extension of The Centaur based on the myth archetype in female characters, narrative mode and the themes. Chapter four is the conclusion. This chapter summarizes the ideas in previous chapters, demonstrating how Updike perfects and extends the mythological archetype in his work especially explores how the theme of The Centaur is deepened in modern society.Through the comparative analysis between The Centaur and the myth of Chiron, we can see whether Chiron or George Caldwell are unable independently to choose the release of death, but only reluctantly accept destined arrangement. Through the refining and interpretation of the Updike’s works this paper wants to achieve the reconstruction of modern faith and get out of the desert of spirit. Although Updike does not express how to get out of the desert of spirit, give us a lot of positive implications in the text.