Maud Bodkin
Encyclopedia
Amy Maud Bodkin was a British classical scholar, writer on mythology
, and literary critic. She is best known for her 1934 book Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination (London: Oxford University Press). It is generally taken to be a major work in applying the theories of Carl Jung
to literature.
Bodkin's other main works are The Quest for Salvation in an Ancient and a Modern Play (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1941) and Studies of Type-Images in Poetry, Religion and Philosophy (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951).
,” the “rebirth
archetype,” the “archetype of Heaven
and Hell
,” and “images of the Devil
, the Hero
, and God
” (Boswell 1936: 553). Boswell goes on to write that Bodkin’s “analyses and presentation are excellent; but the explanations, where any are attempted, seem inadequate to account for some very significant facts which the analyses have brought out” (Boswell 1936: 553).
On the other hand, Willcock (1936: 92) states that “the final impression left by Bodkin’s book is one of unusual sensitiveness in reading and sincerity in recording experience.” In addition, “Bodkin’s pursuit of primordial symbols serves her determination to show, at least from one angle of approach, what poetry is and how it works. She holds herself back from slipping down the easy slope of paraphrase and prose meanings; neither does she drift into allegories and typifiyings” (Willcock 1936: 91).
Finally, Hooke (1935: 176) called Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, “a distinguished book; distinguished by acute reasoning, wide and deep learning, and a fine sensitiveness to poetic values. It is a courageous and, to a great extent, successful attempt to apply the technique of analytical psychology
to the cloudy and elusive emotional patterns brought up into consciousness by the magic of great poetry.”
The texts Bodkin discusses in Archetypal Patterns in Poetry include those of Virgil
, Dante
, Shakespeare
, Milton
, and Coleridge
(Hooke 1935: 176; Boswell 1936: 553; Willcock 1936: 91); Goethe
and Euripides
(Boswell 1936: 553); and Aeschylus
, Shelley
, T. S. Eliot
, as well as the Christian Gospels
(Hooke 1935: 177).
The Divine Despot seems to be involved in the Heaven-and-Hell archetype, the kernel of which contains a "vital aspect" that is both positive and negative, and appears in space "as an image of loveliness with an ever attendant threatening shadow, a desolation beneath or around it" (Bodkin 1934: 122; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 721).
Heaven, Hell, and the Divine Despot may descend to earth and have offspring in the Hamlet theme which involves a child's "ambivalent attitude" toward its parents and off of which are spun such variants as Oedipus and Orestes (Bodkin 1934: 11-15, cited in Williams 1973: 221), or all may remain at the divine level, as in the situation with Milton's God and Satan, or Aeschylus's Zeus and Prometheus:
Complicating matters is the Rebirth archetype which, like the Heaven-and-Hell archetype, also involves a "vital aspect" that is simultaneously positive and negative, but which appears, not static, but rather "as a passage in time, from life to desolate death and beyond, to life renewed" (Bodkin 1934: 122; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 721). In addition, there is a "night-journey stage within the pattern of Rebirth" (Bodkin 1934: 136; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 735).
Rebirth is
Rebirth starts with frustration and has as its goal transcendence; between these two extends the “process of growth, or ‘creative evolution,’ in the course of which the constituent factors are transformed” (Bodkin 1934: 72; cited in Morgan 1971: 42).
Heaven, Hell, and Rebirth are related: "Heaven is mainly a garden in spring, Hell the scape of winter or a desert, and Rebirth an April violet" (Shmiefsky 1967: 721). Milton's Paradise Lost is an example of this interrelation of the two archetypes, where Bodkin claims that "it is as though the poet's feeling divined the relation of the concepts of Heaven and Hell to the images of spring's beauty and of the darkness under the earth whence beauty comes forth and to which it returns" (Bodkin 1963: 97; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 735). Further interpatterning of the two archetypes, spatially and temporally, occurs when Satan emerges "upwards from his tremendous cavern below the realm of Chaos, to waylay the flower-like Eve in her walled Paradise and make her an inmate of his Hell, even as Pluto rose from beneath the earth to carry off Proserpine from her flowery meadow" (Bodkin 1934: 97-98; cited in Rosenman 1978: 12)
Above everything, the Star image "shines clear, for a moment between the opposites, between man and woman, between day and night; [it] fades and returns like the bloom of a flower, as the world's rhythms sweep on" (Bodkin 1934: 296; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 725).
:
While the same journal's issue of July 1940 presented this statement by her:
Bodkin also grappled with the ideas of I. A. Richards
and A. N. Whitehead
, examining the latter's concept of the “Divine persuasion” in a 1945 article entitled “Physical Agencies and the Divine Persuasion” and the former’s understanding of “truth in poetry” in an article of the same name, which concludes:
, along with those from “the great religions of the East
” (cited in Hayward 1952), came to dominate Bodkin’s later thought and writings, which may also have been influenced by her readings of Martin Buber
, Gilbert Ryle
, and Karl Jaspers
(among others), as her 1944 letter to the editor of Philosophy, “Our Knowledge of One Another,” and a 1956 article in the same journal, “Knowledge and Faith,” seem to show. The title of Bodkin’s short (54 pages) book, The Quest for Salvation in an Ancient and a Modern Play, substantiates one of her chief concerns. This book compares Aeschylus’s Eumenides with themes in T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion, the “modern play” which Bodkin had reviewed two years earlier, in May 1939.
As for Bodkin’s last major work, Studies of Type-Images in Poetry, Religion and Philosophy, Carré (1952: 285) states that it “comprises loose meditations on religious themes, straying through a range of cloudy ideas and culling bunches of quotations from novelists, playwrights, poets and prophets.” The “basic question” that Studies of Type-Images in Poetry, Religion and Philosophy explores was “suggested to the author by Martin Buber
,” while “the answer, insofar as any answer can be given, is derived from certain philosophical implications of Carl Jung’s psychological studies” (Hayward 1952: 225). In this book, Bodkin tried “to understand and make some reasonable discrimination and choice among the type-images which are actually working among us and openly available to us in literary, ritualistic, or philosophical forms” (Hayward 1952: 225). Hayward also states that Bodkin criticized “Freud
’s critique of religion on the grounds that he knew only Zeus
or Jehovah
, the paternal-authoritarian type of God
, a God
who never underwent birth, suffering, death, as did Dionysos
or Jesus
” (Hayward 1952: 226). In addition, Aldrich (1953: 153) points out that Studies of Type-Images in Poetry, Religion and Philosophy is “a sequel and supplement” to Archetypal Patterns in Poetry and that the theme of both books is “the current widespread idea that we have not wholly awakened out of the ‘dream’ of mythic consciousness, whose symbols are still exploited in great poetry and religion and even metaphysics.” Furthermore, “both books were written under the spell mainly of C. J. Jung, but also of Albert Schweitzer
and Plato
. Both use introspective, subjectivist methods of depth psychology
, attempting to disclose or make explicit the ‘archetypal patterns’ of prelogical experience and culture” (Aldrich 1953: 153).
Some writers felt that the “type-image” of Bodkin’s last book was a more fruitful concept than the “archetype” of her first. For example, Walter Sutton published an essay in 1960 which
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
, and literary critic. She is best known for her 1934 book Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination (London: Oxford University Press). It is generally taken to be a major work in applying the theories of Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
to literature.
Bodkin's other main works are The Quest for Salvation in an Ancient and a Modern Play (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1941) and Studies of Type-Images in Poetry, Religion and Philosophy (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951).
Reviews
In Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, Bodkin tried, as Boswell (1936: 553) quotes, “to bring psychological analysis and reflection to bear upon the imaginative experience communicated by great poetry, and to examine those forms or patterns in which the universal forces of our nature there find objectification.” Among the forms or archetypal patterns Bodkin presented, according to Boswell, may be included: the “Oedipus complexOedipus complex
In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...
,” the “rebirth
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
archetype,” the “archetype of Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
and Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
,” and “images of the Devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
, the Hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
, and God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
” (Boswell 1936: 553). Boswell goes on to write that Bodkin’s “analyses and presentation are excellent; but the explanations, where any are attempted, seem inadequate to account for some very significant facts which the analyses have brought out” (Boswell 1936: 553).
On the other hand, Willcock (1936: 92) states that “the final impression left by Bodkin’s book is one of unusual sensitiveness in reading and sincerity in recording experience.” In addition, “Bodkin’s pursuit of primordial symbols serves her determination to show, at least from one angle of approach, what poetry is and how it works. She holds herself back from slipping down the easy slope of paraphrase and prose meanings; neither does she drift into allegories and typifiyings” (Willcock 1936: 91).
Finally, Hooke (1935: 176) called Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, “a distinguished book; distinguished by acute reasoning, wide and deep learning, and a fine sensitiveness to poetic values. It is a courageous and, to a great extent, successful attempt to apply the technique of analytical psychology
Analytical psychology
Analytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. His theoretical orientation has been advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. Though they share similarities, analytical psychology is distinct from...
to the cloudy and elusive emotional patterns brought up into consciousness by the magic of great poetry.”
The texts Bodkin discusses in Archetypal Patterns in Poetry include those of Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
, Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, and Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
(Hooke 1935: 176; Boswell 1936: 553; Willcock 1936: 91); Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
and Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
(Boswell 1936: 553); and Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
, Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, as well as the Christian Gospels
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
(Hooke 1935: 177).
Discussion
At work in the poems of Milton and Aeschylus, for example, as well as in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, is a father-like figure that Bodkin identifies as the Divine Despot (Bodkin 1934: 250; cited in Allgaier 1973: 1036).The Divine Despot seems to be involved in the Heaven-and-Hell archetype, the kernel of which contains a "vital aspect" that is both positive and negative, and appears in space "as an image of loveliness with an ever attendant threatening shadow, a desolation beneath or around it" (Bodkin 1934: 122; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 721).
Heaven, Hell, and the Divine Despot may descend to earth and have offspring in the Hamlet theme which involves a child's "ambivalent attitude" toward its parents and off of which are spun such variants as Oedipus and Orestes (Bodkin 1934: 11-15, cited in Williams 1973: 221), or all may remain at the divine level, as in the situation with Milton's God and Satan, or Aeschylus's Zeus and Prometheus:
"The antagonism between Prometheus and Zeus can partly be traced to a very general psychological tension, between the instinct of self-expression and rebellion against group values, and the opposite instinct to sustain those group values, and to merge personal claims in a greater power. Bodkin shows how Milton's Satan represents both these psychological forces at different times. Sometimes he is the heroic antagonist of tyranny, and sometimes a devilish enemy of group values, conceived to reside in the protection of God. In the mind of the reader there are these forces, sometimes inherited from very ancient times, and they may determine his response to the poetry quite independently of his conscious thinking about God, fate, and morality. As in the mind of poet or percipient the character of Satan alternates, so inversely the character of God must alternate too. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus are remembered dim fears that progress is wrong, inimical to the group; but also there are present instincts of self-assertion and rebellion. These instincts are connected with the infantile wishes and fears which still lurk in our minds. A poet may 'recall an infantile type of religious fear,' suggesting 'the Freudian doctrine of the father complexFather complexFather complex in psychology is a complex - a group of unconscious associations, or a strong unconscious impulses - which specifically pertains to the image or archetype of the father...
or imago, in relation to God.' 'The Freudian school of psychologists has asserted that the religious life represents a dramatisation on the cosmic plane of emotions which arose in the child's relation to his parents' " (Knight 1938: 53-54; citing Bodkin 1934: 191, 232 ff., 239, 242).
Complicating matters is the Rebirth archetype which, like the Heaven-and-Hell archetype, also involves a "vital aspect" that is simultaneously positive and negative, but which appears, not static, but rather "as a passage in time, from life to desolate death and beyond, to life renewed" (Bodkin 1934: 122; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 721). In addition, there is a "night-journey stage within the pattern of Rebirth" (Bodkin 1934: 136; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 735).
Rebirth is
“a movement, downward, or inward toward the earth’s centre, or a cessation of movement—a physical change which … appears also as a transition toward severed relation with the outer world, and, it may be, toward disintegration and death. This element in the pattern is balanced by a movement upward and outward—an expansion or outburst of activity, a transition toward redintegration and life-renewal” (Bodkin 1934: 54; cited in Morgan 1971: 42).
Rebirth starts with frustration and has as its goal transcendence; between these two extends the “process of growth, or ‘creative evolution,’ in the course of which the constituent factors are transformed” (Bodkin 1934: 72; cited in Morgan 1971: 42).
Heaven, Hell, and Rebirth are related: "Heaven is mainly a garden in spring, Hell the scape of winter or a desert, and Rebirth an April violet" (Shmiefsky 1967: 721). Milton's Paradise Lost is an example of this interrelation of the two archetypes, where Bodkin claims that "it is as though the poet's feeling divined the relation of the concepts of Heaven and Hell to the images of spring's beauty and of the darkness under the earth whence beauty comes forth and to which it returns" (Bodkin 1963: 97; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 735). Further interpatterning of the two archetypes, spatially and temporally, occurs when Satan emerges "upwards from his tremendous cavern below the realm of Chaos, to waylay the flower-like Eve in her walled Paradise and make her an inmate of his Hell, even as Pluto rose from beneath the earth to carry off Proserpine from her flowery meadow" (Bodkin 1934: 97-98; cited in Rosenman 1978: 12)
Above everything, the Star image "shines clear, for a moment between the opposites, between man and woman, between day and night; [it] fades and returns like the bloom of a flower, as the world's rhythms sweep on" (Bodkin 1934: 296; cited in Shmiefsky 1967: 725).
Letters and articles
Bodkin did not limit herself to the classics nor to Jung, however. She was also an astute reader of other important philosophers of the time. The July 1938 issue of Philosophy, for example, published a letter Bodkin wrote to the editor concerning SantayanaGeorge Santayana
George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters...
:
“It seems to me that many philosophers are rightly realizing—to-day perhaps more than ever before—that our clearest renderings of reality, whether couched in austere conceptual terms or variegated with abundant imagery, may with equal justice be described as myths—myths in the sense of partial renderings of some human, historically conditioned standpoint of what necessarily transcends human grasp” (Bodkin 1938: 379).
While the same journal's issue of July 1940 presented this statement by her:
“In my own thought I have realized the importance of Professor CollingwoodR. G. CollingwoodRobin George Collingwood was a British philosopher and historian. He was born at Cartmel, Grange-over-Sands in Lancashire, the son of the academic W. G. Collingwood, and was educated at Rugby School and at University College, Oxford, where he read Greats...
's principle. The process he describes of being ‘burdened’ with a problem that begins as a ‘formless disturbance’ and takes shape gradually in urgent questions, is a matter of the emotional no less than of the intellectual life. Those of us who genuinely hold liberal or democratic principles hold them, I would maintain, neither as habit nor as merely ‘cerebral,’ unemotional thought. Rather they are involved in our intellectual and emotional struggle with problems so deeply rooted within our individual and social life as to be virtually religious in character” (Bodkin 1940: 335).
Bodkin also grappled with the ideas of I. A. Richards
I. A. Richards
Ivor Armstrong Richards was an influential English literary critic and rhetorician....
and A. N. Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
, examining the latter's concept of the “Divine persuasion” in a 1945 article entitled “Physical Agencies and the Divine Persuasion” and the former’s understanding of “truth in poetry” in an article of the same name, which concludes:
“As I clarify, through reflective analysis of imaginative communication, my intellectual references to those social objects—states and forces entering our common life—which the poet may portray through heroic figures, or name GodGodGod is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, DevilDevilThe Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
, HeavenHeavenHeaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
, HellHellIn many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
, I am at the same time ordering my emotional attitudes toward those objects. The gain which has come to those of us whom Dr. Richards's writings have stimulated to keener interest in the attitudes harmonized by poetry is enhanced, it seems to me, when we restore to those attitudes and references which Richards separates the unity claimed for them by the philosophy of organismPhilosophy of OrganismPhilosophy of Organism or Organic Realism is how Alfred North Whitehead described his metaphysics. It is now known as process philosophy....
” (Bodkin 1935: 472).
Bodkin’s later books
Christian themesChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, along with those from “the great religions of the East
Eastern religion
This article is about far east and Indian religions. For other eastern religions see: Eastern_world#Eastern_cultureEastern religions refers to religions originating in the Eastern world —India, China, Japan and Southeast Asia —and thus having dissimilarities with Western religions...
” (cited in Hayward 1952), came to dominate Bodkin’s later thought and writings, which may also have been influenced by her readings of Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
, Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle , was a British philosopher, a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers that shared Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the...
, and Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
(among others), as her 1944 letter to the editor of Philosophy, “Our Knowledge of One Another,” and a 1956 article in the same journal, “Knowledge and Faith,” seem to show. The title of Bodkin’s short (54 pages) book, The Quest for Salvation in an Ancient and a Modern Play, substantiates one of her chief concerns. This book compares Aeschylus’s Eumenides with themes in T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion, the “modern play” which Bodkin had reviewed two years earlier, in May 1939.
As for Bodkin’s last major work, Studies of Type-Images in Poetry, Religion and Philosophy, Carré (1952: 285) states that it “comprises loose meditations on religious themes, straying through a range of cloudy ideas and culling bunches of quotations from novelists, playwrights, poets and prophets.” The “basic question” that Studies of Type-Images in Poetry, Religion and Philosophy explores was “suggested to the author by Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
,” while “the answer, insofar as any answer can be given, is derived from certain philosophical implications of Carl Jung’s psychological studies” (Hayward 1952: 225). In this book, Bodkin tried “to understand and make some reasonable discrimination and choice among the type-images which are actually working among us and openly available to us in literary, ritualistic, or philosophical forms” (Hayward 1952: 225). Hayward also states that Bodkin criticized “Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
’s critique of religion on the grounds that he knew only Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
or Jehovah
Yahweh
Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...
, the paternal-authoritarian type of God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, a God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
who never underwent birth, suffering, death, as did Dionysos
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
or Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
” (Hayward 1952: 226). In addition, Aldrich (1953: 153) points out that Studies of Type-Images in Poetry, Religion and Philosophy is “a sequel and supplement” to Archetypal Patterns in Poetry and that the theme of both books is “the current widespread idea that we have not wholly awakened out of the ‘dream’ of mythic consciousness, whose symbols are still exploited in great poetry and religion and even metaphysics.” Furthermore, “both books were written under the spell mainly of C. J. Jung, but also of Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer OM was a German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire...
and Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
. Both use introspective, subjectivist methods of depth psychology
Depth psychology
Historically, depth psychology, from a German term , was coined by Eugen Bleuler to refer to psychoanalytic approaches to therapy and research that take the unconscious into account. The term has come to refer to the ongoing development of theories and therapies pioneered by Pierre Janet, William...
, attempting to disclose or make explicit the ‘archetypal patterns’ of prelogical experience and culture” (Aldrich 1953: 153).
Some writers felt that the “type-image” of Bodkin’s last book was a more fruitful concept than the “archetype” of her first. For example, Walter Sutton published an essay in 1960 which
“discusses C. G. Jung’s concept of ‘archetype’ as it was used by various critics especially by Maud Bodkin. The conclusion of the discussion is to the effect that instead of ‘archetype’ we should rather use the concept of ‘type-image’ as Maud Bodkin did lately. We avoid thereby the dubious mythological and psychological connotations of the term: archetype—since the term ‘type-image’ admits the possibility of a historical succession of types without implying the existence of a unique prototype supposed to be the underlying substratum of all literary forms referring to a primordial ‘myth.’ The proposed new term retains the idea of uniformity and recurrence inherent in the idea of ‘archetype’ but makes us conceive literature as a culturally conditioned phenomenon valued not because of mythical uniformity but because of appreciation of historically varying originality” (Rieser 1962: 109).
Writings by Maud Bodkin
- Bodkin, M. (1934). Archetypal Patterns of Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination. London: Oxford University Press. [Subsequent printings retain pagination of the first edition.]
- Bodkin, M. (1935). Truth in Poetry. Philosophy 10(40):467–472.
- Bodkin, M. (1938). [Letter to the Editor.] Philosophy 13(51):379–380.
- Bodkin, M. (1939). The Eumenides and Present-Day Consciousness. [Review of T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion.] Adelphi 15:411–413.
- Bodkin, M. (1940). [Letter to the Editor.] Philosophy 15(59):334–335.
- Bodkin, M. (1941). The Quest for Salvation in an Ancient and a Modern Play. London and New York: Oxford University Press.
- Bodkin, M. (1944). Our Knowledge of One Another. [Letter to the Editor.] Philosophy 19(73):190.
- Bodkin, M. (1945). Physical Agencies and the Divine Persuasion. Philosophy 20(76):148–161.
- Bodkin, M. (1951). Studies of Type-Images in Poetry, Religion and Philosophy. London and New York: Oxford University Press.
- Bodkin, M. (1956). Knowledge and Faith. Philosophy 31(117):131–141.
Reviews of Bodkin’s works
- Aldrich, V. C. (1953). Review of Bodkin (1951). Philosophical Review 62(1):153–154.
- Boswell, F. P. (1936). Review of Bodkin (1934). American Journal of Psychology 48(3):553–554.
- Carré, M. H. (1952). Review of Bodkin (1951). Philosophy 27(102):285.
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- Hooke, S. H. (1935). Review of Bodkin (1934). Folklore 46(2):176–179.
- Willcock, G. D. (1936). Review of Bodkin (1934). Modern Language Review 31(1):91–92.
Other sources
- Allgaier, J. (1973). Is King Lear an Antiauthoritarian Play? Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 88(5):1033–1039.
- Knight, W. F. J. (1938). Zeus in the Prometheia. Journal of Hellenic Studies 58(1):51–54.
- Morgan, C. H. (1971). A New Look at Whitman's "Crisis." South Atlantic Bulletin 36(2):41–52.
- Rieser, M. (1962). Some Recent Articles of Interest. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 21(1):107–110.
- Rosenman, J. B. (1978). The Heaven and Hell Archetype in Faulkner's "That Evening Sun" and Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. South Atlantic Bulletin 43(2):12–16.
- Shmiefsky, M. (1967). In Memoriam: Its Seasonal Imagery Reconsidered. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 7(4):721–739.
- Sutton, W. (1960). L’archetipo e la storia. Rivista di Estetica 5(3):349–357.
- Williams, E. W. (1973). In Defense of Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare Quarterly 24(2):221–223.
Further reading
- The summary of Omry RonenOmry RonenOmry Ronen is an American Slavist, known for his works on the Silver Age of Russian Poetry and especially on the poetry of Osip Mandelstam. He is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor....
’s article, “Historical Modernism, Artistic Innovation and Myth-Making in Vladimir Nabokov’s System of Value Judgements” (Philogica 7, 2001/2002), hints at the possibility that Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
may have parodied Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns of Poetry in his novel Pale FirePale FirePale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
. - “The Antinomy of Criticism” (Stochastic Bookmark, October 10, 2005), follows Ronen’s lead and provides relevant citations from Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns of Poetry.
- L. J. Hurst’s review, “The Material World—J. G. Ballard’s The Drowned World” (1997), points out BallardJ. G. BallardJames Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
’s allusions to Maud Bodkin and JungCarl JungCarl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
. - Patrick Grant’s “Tolkien: Archetype and Word” (Cross Currents, Winter 1973, pp. 365–380) mentions Bodkin’s influence on TolkienJ. R. R. TolkienJohn Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
. - Stanley Edgar HymanStanley Edgar HymanStanley Edgar Hyman was a literary critic who wrote primarily about critical methods: the distinct strategies critics use in approaching literary texts. Though most likely to be remembered today as the husband of writer Shirley Jackson, he was influential for the development of literary theory in...
’s The Armed Vision (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), a study of twelve literary critics, has a chapter devoted to “Maud Bodkin and Psychological Criticism.” - Elizabeth Wright, in Psychoanalytic Criticism: Theory in Practice (New York and London: Methuen, 1984) includes Bodkin in her exposition of the links between psychoanalysisPsychoanalysisPsychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
and literature. - Manheim, L. and E. Manheim, eds. (1966). Hidden Patterns: Studies in Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. New York: Macmillan.
- Obler, P. C. (1958). Psychology and Literary Criticism: A Summary and Criticism. Literature and Psychology 8:50–60.
- West, R. B. Jr., ed. (1952). Essays in Modern Literary Criticism. New York and Toronto: Rinehart.
See also
- Archetypal literary criticismArchetypal literary criticismArchetypal literary criticism is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in the narrative, symbols, images, and character types in a literary work...