Analyzing the Aspects of "Beloved" Anima in the Epic "Vis and Rāmin" (On the Basis of Jung's Theory of Archetypes)

Archetypal criticism is a new method by which literary texts are analyzed. Carl Gustav Jung has made this approach of criticism more coherent through suggesting and describing two concepts of Collective Unconscious and Archetype. The archetypes are the common heritage of human civilization that are accumulated in the collective unconscious. Anima, as the most important archetype, is the unconscious feminine side of a man's soul. This archetype is manifested as beloved characters in many works of Persian literature, such as the epic Vis and Rāmin. Hence, through a descriptive-analytical method, the most important manifestations of anima in the form of the character of Vis, the beloved woman of Rāmin have been analyzed in present study. The results show that Vis and Rāmin's love came at a glance. As a bipolar character, Vis sometimes makes Rāmin's life bitter and distressed with coquetry and ignoring, and sometimes, she makes her lover prosperous by approaching him and fulfilling his wishes with love-making... some issues about anima have been also pointed out by Jung.