Literary notes about Archetype (AI summary)
In literature, the term archetype is used to designate an original model or quintessential pattern that informs subsequent copies or representations. It often implies a primordial or ideal form, as seen when authors describe a character as embodying the very essence of a nation's spirit [1] or when divine light is portrayed as the fundamental source from which life emanates [2, 3]. Other writers extend this notion to symbolize the perfect embodiment of natural beauty [4, 5] or even the underlying blueprint inherent in myth and ritual [6]. Thus, archetypes serve as both a benchmark for ideal qualities and a deep-seated source of literary and philosophical meaning.
- Jennie is no mere individual; she is a type of the national character, almost the archetype of the muddled, aspiring, tragic, fate-flogged mass.
— from A Book of Prefaces by H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken - No wonder the ancient Persians thought that Light and Life were one,—both emanations from the Supreme Deity, the archetype of light.
— from Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry by Albert Pike - Its archetype is in the bosom of God, in the eternal relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
— from Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John by William Alexander - Before he had seen her, all the varied stuff of Nature, every material in her workshop, tended to one form of beauty, to the human archetype.
— from The Poetry Of Robert Browning by Stopford Augustus Brooke - His body was the perfection and archetype of the vertebrate form, full of grace, vigour, and agility.
— from The Story of the Earth and Man by Dawson, John William, Sir - To Philo, the Supreme Being was the Primitive Light, or the Archetype of Light, Source whence the rays emanate that illuminate Souls.
— from Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry by Albert Pike
