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University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/52256 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. CONCEPTS OF MYTH AND RITUAL AND CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 1880 - 1970 jay RAJIVA`yERMA. Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Literature at the University of Warwick 15 September 1972 PAGE 4 NUMBERING AS ORIGINAL, ABSTRACT This work is a study of the various concepts and theories of myth and ritual as they are found in some non-literary disciplines, especially anthropology, in literary theory, and in the criticism of Shakespeare. It is divided into two parts. Part I discusses various theories of myth and ritual and the relation of these theories to literature in general. It consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the allegorical theory of myth, and tries to show that the idea of myth as allegory persists in literary criticism, even though it has generally been discarded in theory. It suggests that the majority of criticism in terms of myth and ritual can, in fact, be seen as the extension to literary material of the kind of allegorical and typological exegesis that has been widely practised in scriptural hermeneutic from very early times. This suggestion is tested with reference to Shakespeare-criticism in Chapter 6 in Part II. Chapter 2 discusses the idea of ritual and the specifically anthropological theories concerning the connexions between myth, ritual, and drama. It is suggested here that the idea of ritual as such, and a psychological-cum-sociological extension of the concept of the scapegoat may be critically more valuable than the mere tracing of the origins of works of art in primitive rituals. Chapter 3 discusses ideas concerning a special mythical mode of thought, emphasis being placed here on the theory of Ernst Cassirer. Chapter 4 is concerned with the theories of Northrop Frye and Levi-Strauss, who are both, in their very different ways, interested in the 'structural' approach to myth. Chapter 5 surveys theories concerning the social role of myth and ritual and also discusses the relation between myth and ideology. It is proposed here that application of anthropological theories of myth and ritual in literary criticism should logically lead to a sociological approach to the work of art. i ii Part II is also divided into five chapters, each surveying the existing 'myth' criticism of Shakespeare in the light of the theories outlined in the corresponding chapter in Part I. It emerges from this survey that contrary to the common impression, the influence of anthropological theory, especially of the theories that come after Frazer and the 'Cambridge' anthropologists, has been relatively slight where actual criticism is concerned. In fact, we find that the overwhelming majority of the criticism of Shakespeare in terms of myth is really an extension of allegorical mythography to secular, literary works. In such criticism there is usually an assumption that the work under con- sideration is of mythical or scriptural status and hides some profound and universal truth. Sometimes, however, such criticism may also be seen as an attempt to raise the work of art to the status of myth. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am glad to be able to thank publicly all those who have helped me in the writing of this book. My first and greatest debt is to Professor G. K. Hunter for his continued faith in the project and for his patient reading of the work in various stages of its evolution. His penetrating criticism and innumerable hints and suggestions have been of immense help. Professor Bernard Bergonzi, Dr. Ralph Lass, Mr. William Righter, and Father Cyril Barrett read early drafts of parts of the work, and I am grateful to them for their comments and suggestions. I am indebted to my friends Harish Trivedi and Prem Prakash Dobhal for some useful references, and have also benefited from conversations with several other friends and colleagues. Mrs. Jo Kinnane and Mrs. Winifred Preedy translated some articles from the French, for which I am deeply grateful. Working in the Warwick University Library was one of the pleasantest aspects of the project, and I would like to thank all members library of the staff for helpfulness throughout my stay at the university. I am particularly grateful to Miss Mary and Miss Audrey Cooper and to Mrs. Linda Wright and Mrs. June Stubley of the Inter-Library Loans. I would also like to thank the staff at the Birmingham University, the Shakespeare Institute, and the Central Reference libraries in Birmingham, and especially Miss Barbara Hancock and Mr. Neil Jackson of the Shakespeare Memorial Library. Thanks are also due to Mrs. Mary Caswell for her meticulous typing. My wife has been a constant source of help and encouragement. 11 CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii INTRODUCTION 1 PART I CHAPTER 1 MYTH AS ALLEGORY 12 2 MYTH, RITUAL, AND DRAMA 33 3 MYTHICAL THOUGHT AND VISION 54 4 THE STRUCTURAL APPROACH TO MYTH 76 5 MYTH AND SOCIETY 97 PART II 6 SHAKESPEARE IN THE LIGHT OF ALLEGORICAL MYTHOGRAPHY 117 7 RITUAL IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA 218 8 SHAKESPEARE'S MYTHICAL THOUGHT AND VISION 269 9 MYTH AS STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLE IN SHAKESPEARE 285 10 THE SOCIAL ROLE OF SHAKESPEARE'S MYTHS 299 CONCLUDING REMARKS 309 BIBLIOGRAPHY 314 Iii INTRODUCTION The term myth has a protean life in contemporary criticism. Several writers have written on the 'meanings' of the term in modern criticism 1 and some have also written on the 'myth of myth'. What has come to be known as 'myth criticism' or the 'myth and ritual approach' has elicited hostile as well as enthusiastic responses. For example, in an article written in 1957 Herbert Weisinger claims that 'the "myth and ritual approach" to literature is now one of the high gods in the pantheon of contemporary criticism, and it numbers among its devotees not a few eminently respectable names'. Though Weisinger makes some reservations about some uses of the term myth, it is clear from this essay that he is one of its devotees. On the other hand, William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks express grave doubts about this new god in Literary Criticism: A Short History, which was published in the same year. 'Surely the hugest cloudy symbol, ' they write, 'the most threatening, of our last ten or fifteen years in criticism is the principle 1Herbert Weisinger and Harry Levin have written essays with identical titles: 'Some Meanings of Myth'. Weisinger's essay can be found in The Agony and the Triumph and Levin's in Refractions. See also the entries under the following names in the Bibliography: Haskell M. Block, Daniel Russell Brown, Ruby Cohn, W. W. Douglas, O. B. Hardison, E. W. Herd, C. S. Lewis, Walter J. Ong, Donald A. Stauffer, and William Troy. The following are useful anthologies of essays on myth and literature: Myth: A Symposium, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok; Myth and Mythmaking, edited by Henry A. Murray; and Myth and Literature, edited by John B. Vickery. The whole of Chimera, 4, No. 3 (Spring 1946) is also devoted to myth. (N. B. In this and all subsequent footnotes only the titles of the articles or books are given, along with the pages referred to. For full bibliographical information the reader is referred to the Bibliography. But details of some brief articles or of works referred to only in passing are given only in the notes. ) i 2 of criticism by myth and ritual origins. '2 To investigate the nature of (indeed this cloudy symbol or this new god a Protean god, as will be evident from the pages that follow) is the purpose of this work. Each of the terms myth and ritual signifies a plurality of objects. For example, myth (or mythical) can be used for any of the following: the philosophical fables of Plato; the stories of the Bororo Indians; the kind of thinking that goes into such practices as alchemy, astrology, and various magical rites; a special, and 'higher', mode of insight that is denied to rational man; powerful social and political ideas; distorted history; and lies or errors. To attempt to define such a term is clearly futile. In fact, even when there is agreement about the class of objects signified by the term (for example, that myth looking refers to 'stories about the gods'), there are various ways of at these objects and hence various theories about their nature. The most useful thing to do with such terms, I believe, is to examine their various uses and to classify them according to the theories that they implicitly or explicitly assume or imply. This is what I propose to do in Part I of the present work. This study is not intended, however, to be an exhaustive analysis of the various concepts and theories of myth and ritual. It is primarily concerned with these theories and concepts as they impinge upon literary criticism. But even 'literary criticism' is too large and too vague a field, and in any case there has been far too much theorizing often about myth and its relevance to literary criticism in the abstract, in an oracular manner, to justify yet another essay on the same topic. A really useful discussion of critical concepts must, I believe, be anchored in the actual criticism of works of literature.

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