Archetypal Analysis of the Story of the Righteous Woman Based on Jungian Ideas

Archetypal criticism is an important approach in contemporary literary criticism exploring the nature of archetypes and their roles in literature. Like many other literary works, mystical works symbolically reflect archetypes. The present study is a Jungian reading of the “Story of the Righteous Woman” in Attar’s Ilahi Nameh. In the present research, the authors have endeavored to briefly introduce theoretical foundations of Jung’s viewpoint and the archetypes he took into consideration with a descriptive-analytic approach. Focusing on the characters, situations, and archetypal symbols, the study aims at analyzing the story, illustrating not only the powerful capabilities of the work in the field of human unconscious, but also the great number of archetypes employed. The righteous woman who is the heroin goes on a quest overcoming the collective unconscious forces such as the sage, rebirth, animus, shadow, and persona, achieving awareness and individualism. Thus she accomplishes the stages of solook (sacred journey) in the best way possible.