An Analysis Of Moses, Man Of The Mountain From The Perspective Of Myth-archetypal Criticism

Zora Neale Hurston(1891-1960) is an African female novelist, folklorist and anthropologist in the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920 s and the 1930 s. Hurston is a prolific African-American woman writer who is considered as the Queen of Harlem Renaissance and also is called the pioneer both in the history of African-American literature of the 20 th century and in the female literature. Her works play a significant role in understanding the language, gender, faith and social intercourse in the black folklores. Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and other post-war female African-American writers are influenced by her and view her as their “literary foremother”.Moses, Man of the Mountain is a novel of Hurston, which is an adaption of the biblical story telling that Moses leads Israel out of Egypt. She combines the traditional Christian culture with the black folk tales and folk culture, giving the characters different traits from those in the Bible.This thesis analyzes Hurston’s work Moses, Man of the Mountain in light of archetypal criticism, trying to reveal the author’s creation purposes by adaption of the traditional Bible. On one hand, Hurston rebuffs the biased criticism against her, that is the rejection to the black culture and the partiality towards white culture; on the other hand, she also preserves the African culture and values fundamentally. In addition, the thesis shows the theme that Hurston as an anthropologist praises the equality and harmoniousness between man and man, man and nature, man and himself.This thesis contains the following six parts:Introduction gives a brief account of the author Zora Neale Hurston and her work Moses, Man of the Mountain and literature review aboard and at home, and then points out the significances of analyzing this work from the perspective of archetypal criticism.Chapter One gives a brief introduction to Frazer’s theory of archetypal criticism, theory of Carl Jung’s collective unconscious and the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye’s theory of archetypal criticism.Chapter Two mainly analyzes the archetypal characters in Moses, Man of the Mountain, including Moses, the hero and tyrant archetypes; Miriam, the rebelling woman and the madwoman in the attic archetypes and Jethro, the wise old man and the indoctrinatory father archetypes. Each of the three characters under the pen of Hurston is embodied dual personalities, rather than sharing single personality.Chapter Three discusses the archetypal images in the novel, specifically analyzing the images including the water, fire and serpent that characterize the bright side of the main character Moses in the novel and the images including darkness, blood and number three that characterize the dark side of Moses.Chapter Four mainly analyzes three archetypal motifs embodied in the novel Moses, Man of the Mountain, namely the journey motif, the love motif and the freedom motif. Through the analysis of the three motifs, the thesis aims at revealing the desire of people to the Promised Land, the author’s exploration of human nature and the thinking on the freedom and liberation.Finally through the above mentioned archetypal analysis, the thesis comes to the conclusion. Hurston adapts the story of Exodus in the Bible, using the myth-archetypal criticism in the text to make the main characters more real, plump and vivid, so that the readers can have a better knowledge and understanding of the characters, the images and the motifs of the novel. At the same time, through analyzing the various archetypes in Moses, Man of the Mountain, scholars can reexamine this novel and hold the themes and connotation of the work at a deeper level and give a fair comment on the work.