Examining the Potentials of the Archetypal Approach in Comparative Studies of Literature: A Brief Survey of the Shadow and Journey Archetypes

Focusing on the linguistic and national diversities, the French school of comparative literature has mainly attempted to trace the footprints of the literature of one country in that of another mostly in a historical context. The rival American school, on the other hand, has raised new questions in this field and extended the scope of research to subsume other domains of scholarly endeavors. The present paper first intends to briefly examine the limitations of the French school. It then proceeds to show how the archetypal approach of literary criticism and the American school of comparative literature can be employed to bear fruitful results in the field of comparative studies. Such interdisciplinary approaches can make up for the possible shortcomings of the individual modes of study and make much of the potentials that the concept of archetype can offer for this purpose. The study then singles out the Shadow archetype and makes a comparative study of the concept in two epic works, i.e. Beowulf and Gilgamesh. It finally picks out a structural archetype—hero’s journey-- as an example, to briefly discuss and evaluate such models.