Abstract: Lord of the Flies is a representative work written by William Golding, a British novelist, playwright and poet. It is this book, with the perspicuity of realistic account art and the diversity and universality of myth, that enables William Golding winning the Nobel Prize (1983), which builds up his reputation all over the world. The book, Lord of the Flies, has shown a number of typical archetypes. Based on the large volumes of research and the theory of Archetypal Criticism, the author of this thesis analyzes the main characters and images involved in the book from a myth-archetypal perspective to reveal the aesthetic significance and the writing purpose of the author. The thesis can be divided into three parts— introduction, main body and conclusion. The first part is introduction which summarize the previous research of the novel briefly and points out the necessity and significance of this thesis. The second part is the main body of this paper, which is made up of three chapters. Chapter One mainly introduces the theoretical foundation of the archetypal criticism. Chapter Two and Chapter Three are the core of this paper, which focus on the four main archetypal characters and three main archetypal images respectively. The last part is conclusion which makes a summary of the preceding chapters and highlights the main purpose of this thesis as well as the importance of the archetypes in Lord of the Flies.

Key words: Lord of the Flies; Archetypal Criticism; Archetypes

Content

摘要：

Abstract:

Introduction-1

Chapter One A Brief Introduction to the Archetypal Criticism-2

1.1The Theoretical Foundation of Archetypal Criticism-3

1.1.1 The Frazerian Myth Theory-3

1.1.2 The Collective Unconsciousness-4

1.1.3 The Main Ideas of Archetypal Criticism-5

1.2 A Brief Introduction to the Main Archetypes in Lord of the Flies-6

Chapter Two The Main Archetypal Characters in Lord of the Flies-7

2.1 Ralph-7

2.2 Simon-8

2.3 Jack and Piggy-9

Chapter Three The Main Archetypal Images in Lord of the Flies-11

3.1 Fire-11

3.2 Conch-12

3.3 Beast-13

Conclusion-14

Bibliography-16