Archetype

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error
  • The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

Resources

A term which becomes central in the psychoanalytic theory of Carl Jung (q.v.) after 1919, and which in the 1960s achieved a slightly different currency in literary criticism, thanks to the work of Northop Frye.

Carl Jung proposed that from birth the human unconscious is stocked with primordial dispositions to compose images of certain kinds, for example the figure of the father, the mother, the brother, the sister. The man as seen by the woman is the “animus”; the woman as seen by the man is the “anima”, and each archetype is deeply infuenced by the paternal or maternal relation. These archetypes are also internalised respectively as the maternal side of the man and the paternal side of the woman.

Carl Jung proposed that from birth the human unconscious is stocked with…

199 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Archetype". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 January 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=72, accessed 19 March 2024.]

72 Archetype 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.