Archetypal criticism of " The story of Amir Arsalan" According to Jung's Individuation Theory

Archetypal criticism is one of the contemporary literary criticism main approaches which discovers the nature and characteristics of the myths and archetypes and their role in literature. This article tries to carry out archetypal criticism of “The story of Amir Arsalan” according to the Jung’s individuation theory. As the hero searching progress and perfection and finding his archetype, Amir Arsalan begins journey and awakes by seeing the image of Farrokhlega (his anima) and achieves new levels of awareness. By passing of the persona archetype he can eliminate the shadow and get married and unify with anima (Farrokhlega) by the help of the wise old man and ends his individuation process and finally, he achieves his archetype. However, he experiences death and rebirth archetypes as revival of life and inner revolution by entering to cave and well- indicating return to fetus period(ritual death)-leaving there as the secret of rebirth.