This is K.M. Wylant and you are listening to the 533 episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

I hope you enjoy this week's episode, an introduction to archetypal stories.

All art is necessarily both reflective and generative of the human experience.

And in that way, all art both reflects and generates archetype.

Some stories do this more simply in all. reflects and it generates archetype.

Some stories do this more simply and obviously than others.

Those stories that we recognize as myth or fable

are most blatantly archetypal.

But even hyper realisticrealistic stories,

when they are well done,

offer up to us the archetypal truths of humanity.

Or as Chef Mario Batali says, if it works, it's true.

Madeline Langel in Walking on Water comments that

all true art has an iconic quality.

All artists reflect the time in which they live, but whether or not their work also has that

universality which lives in any generation or culture is nothing we will know for many years.

If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture.

But if his works reflect the eternal and universal,

they will revive.

So what is an archetype?

My dictionary offers three definitions.

One, a typical specimen, two, an original model,

...