Edward Burnett Tylor first put forward the archetypal. In 1890, J.G.Frazer published The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, which was regarded as the basic work of archetypal theory. And this theory was explained more intensively in Jung’s collective unconsciousness theory. In Jung's view, the essence of literature is to reflect collective unconscious. The process of writing is the process of activating certain archetype. Writers transform the collective unconscious imagination to be accepted and understood by modern people. He thinks there are a lot of archetypes. Among these, the self, the shadow, the anima, and the animus are four major archetypes. The self is God's image, the regulation center of the psyche and facilitator of inpiduation. The shadow is the personification of dark side of human's personality, which we deny in ourselves and project onto others. The anima is the feminine image in a man's psyche, and the animus is the masculine image in a woman's psyche(Zhu Wenqiong,2011: 63). This paper will study on J.K.Rowling’s religious view from some of these archetypes.
2. Literature Review
Since Harry Potter Series was published on 30 June 1997, they have attracted many scholars to study it with many angles of art and literary theories. As to the comments of literature, period can be pided mainly into two parts: one is research done in China, the other is research done abroad.
2.1 Research Done in China
In China, most people study Harry Potter from about two aspects includes children literature, religious story. Ye Shuxian is the first one who studied Harry Potter in China. He analyzes it from the perspective of literary anthropology which reveals us a revival of Celtic culture throughout the world. There are no some new points till recent years. People analyze it from perspective of children literature and religious works. But all of these points have no relation to archetypal theory.
Till 2010, Chinese scholars began to study Harry Potter with archetypal theory. In 2011, Liubo published an essay to analyze the Bible archetypes in Harry Potter.
2.2 Research Done Abroad
Studies on Harry Potter series in western can be pided into 4 periods. The first period is from 1997 to 1999. In 1997, Lindsey Fraser said in his passage issued by Scotsman that J.K.Rowling’s creative use of classical narration tells us a thrilling complex story which is thought provoking. After publishing in the United States, it is also well received .The second period is from 1999 to 2000. In 1999, Charles Taylor pointed that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is one of the adults-reading children's literatures, because of its realistic thinking and ingenious complexity of characterization. In this period, Rowling's novels attracted the attention of the feminist literary criticism “In its extreme form feminist literary theory regards literature solely as a political expression of the relationship between sexes. The author's context and intentions are completely irrelevant and are considered only to the extent to which they confirm the negative position of women within the patriarchal structure of power. Instead of the author's context, it is the reader's context that is examined from the feminist perspective(Zhang Ying, 2002: 9). The third period is from 2000 when the forth book published. Scholars start to study Harry Potter with Serious academic thinking and perse academic perspective and the study of Harry Potter begin to return to the text and to a perse academic research. And the fourth period is from 2002 to the present. In 2002, the first book of research papers The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter : Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon edited by Lana A. White was published in which the author said that the literary value of J.K.Rowling's Potter books should be studied in a comprehensive multi-level.
To sum up, western research on J. K. Rowling becomes perse and it is difficult to master the concrete direction. And research in China still stays in the superficial paraphrasing and book review on the relationships of names between series of the Potter books and The Holy Bible without any further study. This thesis paper will concentrate on archetypal analysis. And it shows us Rowling’s religious view which neither a Chinese nor a western scholar has studied. 《哈利波特》的圣经原型解读(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_57456.html