Term of Art: Archetype

“Archetype: (Greek “original pattern) A basic model from which copies are made; therefore a prototype. In general terms, the abstract idea of a class of things which represents the most typical and essential characteristics shared by the class; thus a paradigm of exemplar. An archetype is atavistic and universal, the product of “the collective unconscious” and inherited from our ancestors. The fundamental facts of human existence are archetypal: birth, growing up, love, family and tribal life, dying, death, not to mention the struggle between children and parents, and fraternal rivalry. Certain character or personality types have become established as more or less archetypal. For instance, the rebel, the Don Juan (womanizer), the all-conquering hero, the braggadocio, the country bumpkin, the local lad who makes good, the self-made man, the hunted man, the siren, the witch and femme fatale, the villain, the traitor, the snob and the social climber, the guild-ridden figure in search of expiation, the damsel in distress, and the person more sinned against than sinning. Creatures, also, have come to be archetypal emblems. For example, the lion, the eagle, the snake, the hare and the tortoise. Further archetypes are the rose, the paradisiacal garden and the state of “pre-Fall” innocence. Themes include the arduous quest of search, the pursuit of vengeance, the overcoming of difficult tasks, the descent into the underworld, symbolic fertility rites and redemptive rituals.

The archetypal idea has always been present and diffused in human consciousness. Plato was the first philosopher to elaborate the concept of archetypal or ideal forms (Beauty, Truth, Goodness) and divine archetypes. Since the turn of the 19^th century the idea and the subject have been explored extensively. Practitioners of the two sciences of comparative anthropology and depth psychology have made notable contributions. The major works in this venture of discovery include: J.G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890-1915); C.G. Jung’s “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetic Art” (1922) in Contributions to Analytical Psychology (1928) and ‘Psychology and Literature’ in Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933); Sigmund Freud’s A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1920); Maud Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934); G. Wilson Knight’s Starlit Dance (1941); Ernst Cassirer’s Language and Myth (translated 1946); Robert Graves’s The White Goddess (1948); Richard Chase’s Quest for Myth (1949); Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949); Philip Wheelwright’s The Burning Fountain (1954) and his Metaphor and Reality (1962); B.[arbara] Seward’s The Symbolic Rose (1960); Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) and ‘The Archetypes of Literature’ in Fables of Identity (1963), plus several other inquiries.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.