Archetypal literary criticism is an analytical approach that interprets texts by focusing on recurring myths, symbols, and character types—known as archetypes—that appear across literature. Formally established in 1934 with Maud Bodkin's Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, the field draws heavily from two academic roots: Sir James George Frazer's anthropology and Carl Jung's psychoanalysis. Frazer's seminal work The Golden Bough (1890–1915) highlighted the universal "death-rebirth" myth, exemplified by the Greek story of Persephone, whose annual descent into the Underworld explains the changing seasons. Meanwhile, Jung contributed the concept of the collective unconscious, a shared, innate layer of the human psyche containing these universal archetypes. The approach reached its peak popularity in the 1940s and 1950s, largely thanks to Canadian critic Northrop Frye, though it is no longer widely practiced today, it still holds a respected place in the tradition of literary studies.