ARCHETYPE

(from Greek archetypos, original pattern), in literary criticism, a primordial image, character, or pattern of circumstances that recurs throughout literature and thought consistently enough to be considered a universal concept or situation. The term was adopted by literary critics from the writings of the psychologist Carl Jung, who formulated a theory of a collective unconscious. For Jung, the varieties of human experience have somehow been genetically coded and transferred to successive generations. These primordial image patterns and situations evoke startlingly similar feelings in both reader and author.