But what is a hero? (I, II, III) .
In the midst of creating this entirely new, self-containing world with seven intelligent races, Tolkien still prevailed in capturing the essence of the archetypal hero in both Frodo and Aragorn . Larger than life heroes are rare in twentieth century literature; they do not fit comfortable in an age, which seems preoccupied with the ordinary (Flieger 41). With this in mind, Tolkein has still managed to create the extraordinary hero along with the ordinary hero.
The term archetype has been documented back as far as Plato, but not until the early part of the twenty-first century in the works of Carl Jung, the founder of modern analytical psychology did the term gain academic respect. Jung's work is largely influenced through J.G. Frazer whose work, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, is cited in Jung's Psycology of the Unconscious (Rupprecht 1). .
Jung's original definition of Archetype is "term to describe the universal figures arising from the deep structures of the psyche; a psychological and mythological motif common to all peoples at all times, which manifests itself recurrently in dreams, mythology, religion, and mass culture" (Potts 4). He later added that "while the conscious representations of archetypes may vary from culture to culture, and individual to individual, the basic template remains the same" (Potts 4). While Jung succeeded in bringing the archetypal theory into the collective eye of academia, it was Northrop Frye, a Princeton professor, who showed the value of the archetypal theory in the more specific area literary criticism with his work Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. If someone were to compare the cycle set out by both Campbell and Jung that someone would see that thought each cycle differs slightly they maintain the same structure. Jung's hero is found over and again in tales and folklore very much in this form: .
