Archetypes and Milton's 'Lycidas'

The term 'archetype' has been frequently used in literary criticism. But it was especially used since the publication of Maud Bodkin's 'Archetypal Patterns in Poetry' (1934). The word 'archetype' has been derived from the Greek 'arche' meaning 'original' or 'primitive' and 'typos' meaning 'form'.

The term was employed by C.G. Jung (the psychoanalyst). It has been used by the New Critics since 1930s to refer to a specific pattern fo plot or character which gives rise to what Jung calls a “racial pattern”. Generally in criticism ‘archetype’ is applied to narrative patterns, type of character or images, which are common to a variety of literary works, myths or dreams. The followers of archetypal criticism are Maud Bodkin, G.Wilson Knight, Robert Graves, Richard Chase, Joseph Campbell, Philip Wheelwright.

In this post I am only going to talk about the archetypes in Milton’s ‘Lycidas’. Milton’s ‘Lycidas’ is an elegy in the pastoral convention. It has been written n commemoration of Edward King, who died having drowned in the sea. In this poem, Lycidas is not an individual but an archetype. He is an archetype of Edward King. Although the use of a flower in poetry is not an archetype, yet the ‘sanguine flower inscrib’d with woe’ is one. This is so because of the tradition of associating a red or purple flower with the death of a young man.

In addition to it, Lycidas is not only the representation of Edward King, he is based on the same conventional form of Shelley’s Adonais, Daphnis of Theocritus and Virgil, and Milton’s own Damon. Then there are archetypes of the King as a poet and as a priest, Orpheus and Peter respectively. Further, there is the image of a dolphin, a conventional type of Christ.Milton’s Lycidas has been dealt in detail by Northrop Frye in his essay ‘Literature as Context: Milton’s Lycidas’.