In
textual criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...
, an exemplar is the text used to produce another text. In the study of the history of a text an especially important exemplar is that which precedes any split in the tradition of that text, that is, before significant textual variations occur in different versions: such an exemplar is called an
archetype
The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis.
An archetype can be any of the following:
# a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...
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Textual criticism
Biblical criticism
Philology
Textual scholarship
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