مشخصات پژوهش

Eugene O’Neill’s drama, The Hairy Ape and Gholam Hossein Saedi’s drama, The Cow have been the subject of scrutiny for years. Yet, the concept of archetypal criticism, which determine the effects of cultural and psychological myths on characters, has mostly remained unexplored. Especially, the impact of ecocriticism on the archetypal criticism and how they can be related to each other in these two works have mostly been neglected by critics. The present thesis tries to explore the field of literary study that addresses how humans are related to nonhuman Nature or the animals in literature, and how it can be grasped when we refer to our collective unconscious, according to myth critics, who believe that the great literature can be identified in those mythic elements which give a work of literature deeper resonance. The dramas are then examined and compared for possible correspondence with mythic elements based on our collective unconscious that make ecocriticism, in the case of love to animals and Nature, even more relevant, to the theory and ideas put forward by Carl Jung. Then, the theory is applied to explain the reason for the irrational behavior and spiritual barrenness of the protagonists in these two dramas and find a way into their complicated psyches and nonhuman Nature.