A Jungian Reading of Beowulf Essay -- Epic of Beowulf Essay

A Jungian Reading of Beowulf This essay go forth propose an resource means by which to examine the distinctive fusion of historical, mythological, and poetic elements that hire up the whole of Beowulf. Jeffrey Helter soldiery, in a 1968 essay, Beowulf The Archetype Enters History, first accept Grendel as a representation of the Shadow pilot and identified Grendels mother as an archetypal Anima image I wish to plow the scope of the reading by suggesting that the dragon, too, represents an archetype the archetype of the Self. John Miles Foley, in his landmark 1977 essay Beowulf and the Psychohistory of Anglo-Saxon Culture, first suggested that the progression of battles between man and monster in Beowulf symbolically recalls the primal myth, the monomyth, which recounts some(prenominal) the process of exclusive psychological growth and the development of universal human consciousness. I will explore in greater detail the idea that the progression of battles specifically repres ents the process of individual psychological development through which the ego confronts in-person archetypes in order to achieve complete self-knowledge the process of individuation.According to Jung, an archetype represents certain instinctive data of the dark, primitive psychereal just invisible roots of consciousness (9,i271). He notes that the ultimate core of substance may be circumscribed, but not described, as elements represented by the archetypal image remain unconscious yet he also proposes that the individual psyche responds to the presence of the archetype by imprinting it with its hold psychic material, thus creating a series of images informed by both universal understanding and personal experience. Jung compares the origina... ...arry, Jr., and H. Marshall Leicester, Jr. Social building as Doom The Limits of Heroism in Beowulf. In Old side of meat Studies in Honor of John C. Pope. Eds. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. Pp 37-79.Foley, John Miles. Beo wulf and the Psychohistory of Anglo-Saxon Culture. AmericanImago 34(1977) 133-153.Helterman, Jeffrey. Beowulf the Archetype Enters History. English Literary History 35(1968) 1-20.Hume, Kathryn. The Theme and Structure of Beowulf. Studies in Philology 72(January 1975) 1-27.Jung, Carl G. The Collected Works of Carl Jung. R.F.C. Hull, trans. Princeton Princeton University Press, 1953-1971.Niles, John. Beowulf The Poem and its Tradition. Cambridge MA Harvard University Press, 1983.Thormann, Janet. Beowulf and the Enjoyment of Violence. lit and Psychology 431(1997) 65-76.