The Metamorphosis Of The Great Mother

Archetypal criticism,an important genre of western literary criticism in the 20 th century,emphasizes the spatial identity of human collective consciousness and the temporal continuity of human subconsciousness.Putting literature in the macro background of human culture and literary tradition,it helps us understand the literary works more comprehensively and deeply.Developing from Ouroboros,the Great Mother includes three types: one is kind;one is horrible;one is kind as well as horrible.As an important archetype existing in the collective unconsciousness of human beings,it shows creativity and destructivity,infinite synchronicity as well as permanent diachronicity.Eugene O'Neill is one of the greatest 20th-century American playwrights and is regarded as “Modern Moses”.His female characters always have a certain degree of maternal characteristics: they treat the men around them like sons.They are caring as well as possessive.These characteristics echo with the archetype of the Great Mother.Eileen Chang once said that if one day she gained faith,it must be Cybel in The Great God Brown of Eugene O'Neill whom she believed in.In her literary works,she created Great Mother images which shared the same characteristic with those of Eugene O'Neill's: they can live comfortably at any time and in any society.This paper is divided into three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction makes reviews on the development of archetypal criticism,the definition of the archetype of the Great Mother and the evolution of the Great Mother in both Chinese and Western cultures.It provides theoretical and practical support for this paper.The main body contains three chapters.Chapter 1 analyzes the consciousness and images of the Great Mother in Eugene O'Neill's literary world.This chapter discusses three types of Great Mother in the plays of Eugene O'Neill and the writer's unique consciousness behind.Chapter 2 covers the consciousness and images of the Great Mother in Eileen Chang's literary world.It discusses the Great Mother images in Eileen Chang's works and her consciousness of Great Mother behind these characters.Chapter 3 discusses the Great Mother's variation and meaning generation in heterogenous cultures.Viewing the changing images of Great Mother from the perspective of culture and literature,this chapter explores the internal causes and specific methods of its replacements and variations.It analyzes Eileen Chang'scross-cultural writing or rewriting of Eugene O'Neill's Great Mother,as well as the deformation of the archetype of Great Mother in a patriarchal society and its significance.The conclusion concludes with an overview of the research process and results of the archetypal study on the Great Mother in Eugene O'Neill and Eileen Chang's works.Through the study on the archetype of Great Mother,this paper tries to explore the realistic and cultural value of literature.