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Literary notes about prototype (AI summary)

In literature the term "prototype" is often invoked to denote an original model or archetype from which later forms derive their essential features or significance. Writers use it to connect contemporary or later ideas back to ancient, classical, or foundational figures and events—for instance, linking modern interpretations of myth to their Grecian origins [1] or suggesting that a character may embody the very archetype of an earlier ideal [2]. Similarly, psychoanalytic works employ the term to illustrate the primary template of complex psychological phenomena, where the prototype becomes a reference point for later distortions or elaborations of the original pattern [3, 4, 5]. This nuanced use of "prototype" underscores its function as a benchmark against which changes or deviations are measured, enriching the text with layers of historical and symbolic meaning [6, 7].
  1. Its ancient Grecian prototype is found in the Odyssey.
    — from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes
  2. He is the prototype of Squire Allworthy in Fielding's Tom Jones ; and after the novelist's death he took charge of his family.
    — from The New Gresham Encyclopedia. A to Amide by Various
  3. The prototype which the paranoiac reconstructs in his persecution mania, is found in the relation of the child to its father.
    — from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud
  4. But in that case we must scrutinize more closely the prototype of the neurosis itself which is responsible for having raised this doubt.
    — from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud
  5. Another peculiarity of dream-work finds it prototype in the development of language.
    — from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
  6. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same fashion as his prototype, the grizzly.
    — from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte
  7. Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype.
    — from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin

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