Archetype is the
usage of any object or situation as it was originally made - think of it as the
biggest cliché ever, but one that never dies.
ex: The Odyssey is so full of archetypes that there is probably at least one of every
kind. Odysseus is the archetipical hero, Hydra and Charybdis and the Cyclops are the
archetypical monsters...
Provided by Leigh Averett
The word "archetype" was coined by Carl Jung, who theorized that humans have a collective
unconscious, "deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity.... a kind of
readiness to reproduce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas...." This
shared memory of experiences has resulted in a resonance of the concepts of hero and
heroine that transcends time, place and culture. Jung called these recurring personalities
archetypes, from the Greek word archetypos, meaning “first of its kind.”
From What are the Sixteen
Master Archetypes?
From Wikipedia
Archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object, or concept from which similar
instances are derived, copied, patterned, or emulated. In psychology, an archetype is a
model of a person, personality, or behavior. This article is about personality archetypes,
as described in literature analysis and the study of the psyche.