A Jungian Reading of Beowulf Essay -- Epic of Beowulf Essay

A Jungian Reading of Beowulf This essay will propose an alternative subject matter by which to examine the distinctive fusion of historical, mythological, and poetic elements that make up the whole of Beowulf. Jeffrey Helterman, in a 1968 essay, Beowulf The Archetype Enters History, first recognized Grendel as a representation of the Shadow archetype and identified Grendels mother as an archetypal Anima image I wish to extend the scope of the reading by suggesting that the dragon, too, represents an archetype the archetype of the Self. stern Miles Foley, in his landmark 1977 essay Beowulf and the Psychohistory of Anglo-Saxon Culture, first suggested that the progression of battles between man and monster in Beowulf symbolically recalls the important myth, the monomyth, which recounts both the process of undivided psychological growth and the development of universal human consciousness. I will explore in greater detail the judgment that the progression of battles specifically r epresents the process of individual psychological development through which the ego confronts personal archetypes in order to achieve complete self-knowledge the process of individuation. match to Jung, an archetype represents certain instinctive data of the dark, primitive psychereal but invisible roots of consciousness (9,i271). He notes that the ultimate core of importee may be circumscribed, but not described, as elements represented by the archetypal image remain unconscious yet he also proposes that the individual psyche responds to the presence of the archetype by imprinting it with its own psychic material, thus creating a series of images informed by both universal understand and personal experience. Jung compares the origina... ...arry, Jr., and H. Marshall Leicester, Jr. Social Structure as Doom The Limits of Heroism in Beowulf. In Old English Studies in Honor of John C. Pope. Eds. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. Pp 37-79.Foley, John Miles. Beowulf and the Ps ychohistory of Anglo-Saxon Culture. AmericanImago 34(1977) 133-153.Helterman, Jeffrey. Beowulf the Archetype Enters History. English Literary History 35(1968) 1-20.Hume, Kathryn. The Theme and Structure of Beowulf. Studies in Philology 72(January 1975) 1-27.Jung, Carl G. The Collected Works of Carl Jung. R.F.C. Hull, trans. Princeton Princeton University Press, 1953-1971.Niles, John. Beowulf The numbers and its Tradition. Cambridge MA Harvard University Press, 1983.Thormann, Janet. Beowulf and the Enjoyment of Violence. Literature and Psychology 431(1997) 65-76.