The quest story has existed for centuries, with Homer’s The Odyssey serving as the prototypical example. Also known as the hero’s journey, plot aspects of the quest often appear in the modern English-language romance novel and may be identified in… Read More ›
The origin of The Hobbit (1937) is well known. One day in the late 1920s, Tolkien was grading essays when he came across a blank page and absently wrote the sentence “In a hole in the ground there lived a… Read More ›
Archetypal theory and criticism, although often used synonymously with Myth theory and crticism, has a distinct history and process. The term “archetype” can be traced to Plato (arche, “original”; typos, “form”), but the concept gained currency in twentieth-century literary theory… Read More ›
The theatrical quality of du Maurier’s (13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) novels is evidenced by the frequency and reported ease with which her works were adapted for the big screen. Alfred Hitchcock directed film versions of Jamaica Inn,… Read More ›
J. R. R. Tolkien’s (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) fiction dismayed most of his fellow scholars at the University of Oxford as much as it delighted most of his general readers. Such reactions sprang from their recognition of… Read More ›
Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) introduced the archetypal approach called Myth Criticism, combining the typological interpretation of the Bible and the conception of imagination prevalent in the writings of William Blake. Frye continued the formalist emphasis of New Criticism… Read More ›
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