Archetypes


 

Definition of an Archetype

ARCHETYPE –The model of a person, personality or behavior from which later examples are developed.

What is an archetype? Well, if you looked in A Handbook to Literature, you would find three paragraphs about archetypes. It begins… “ This literary term applies to an image, a descriptive detail, a plot pattern, or a character type that occurs frequently in literature, myth, religion, or folklore…” and it goes on.

This term, whose earlier meaning, "original model," or "prototype," has been enlarged by Jung and by several contemporary literary critics. A Jungian archetype is a thought pattern that finds worldwide parallels, either in cultures (for example, the similarity of the ritual of Holy Communion in Europe with the tecqualo in ancient Mexico) or in individuals (a child's concept of a parent as both heroic and tyrannic, superman and ogre). Jung believed that such archetypal images and ideas reside in the unconscious level of the mind of every human being and are inherited from the ancestors of the race. They form the substance of the collective unconscious. Literary critics such as Northrop Frye and Maud Bodkin use the term archetype interchangeably with the term motif, emphasizing that the role of these elements in great works of literature is to unite readers with otherwise dispersed cultures and eras.

 

Example of Archetypes Found in Literature

  1. The deliberate hero who is often marked for greatness in some way and
  2. the reluctant hero who is thrust into his/her hero quest (i.e. drafted into the army) and has some fear or sense of not fitting in the world which pushes him/her into a hero quest.

 

Some Important Archetypes

 

Archetypal Approach to Literature

A mythological / archetypal approach to literature assumes that there is a collection of symbols, images, characters, and motifs (i.e. archetypes) that evokes basically the same response in all people. According to the psychologist Carl Jung, mankind possesses a "collective unconscious" that contains these archetypes and that is common to all of humanity. Myth critics identify these archetypal patterns and discuss how they function in the works. They believe that these archetypes are the source of much of literature's power.

 

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