Archetype

Archetypes reflect universal, primitive, and elemental patterns whose effective embodiment in a literary work evokes a profound response from the reader. They manifest as narrative designs, character types, images identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, myths, dreams, and ritualized modes of social behavior. Anthropologist J. G. Frazer, in his work The Golden Bough, suggests that an archetype represents elemental patterns of myth and ritual recurring in legends and ceremonies of diverse cultures. Carl Jung sees archetypes as “primordial images” or “psychic residue” of repeated types of experiences in the lives of our ancient ancestors that present themselves in the “collective unconscious” of the human race and give rise to myth, religion, dream, fantasy, and literature.

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