Abstract
Literature is one of the recreational arts created to enhance the quality of human life, not limited to entertainment, but also considered a tool to satisfy the search for knowledge. If literature is a projection of the psyche, it is also a network that actively works to make sense of itself. According to Carl Jung’s collective unconscious noumena, all human beings share a subconscious mind that stores the memories of all humans throughout time which connects the psyche to the world, and therefore, we are all connected through it. This collective unconscious refers to similar patterns in images, characters, and events, which Jung calls “archetypes.” Applying Jung’s noumena to literature, one concludes that as the network of archetypes activates, literature becomes a branch of texts interconnecting to tell one story. Moreover, this story, being the same as the one that Jung argues, is the story of humankind. Through a contextual literary psychoanalysis methodology, this study further explores the branches of literature through its use of the archetype of life and the archetype of meaning in world-acclaimed literary compositions such as William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
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