Theme (literature).html



A theme is a broad idea in a story or literary work a message or lesson conveyed by a written text. This message is usually about life, society or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas. Most themes are implied rather than explicitly stated. The theme is different from the superficial outlay of the text; it is normally the meaning of the text on a more abstract level.

Context

Themes arise from the interplay of plot, setting, character, conflict, and tone. Deep thematic content is not required in literature; however, certain types of literary analysis (like reader's response and socio-cultural analysis) hold that all stories inherently project some kind of outlook on life that can be taken as a theme.

Interpretation

Themes are often interpreted in diverse ways by different people or critics, regardless of whether or not the theme discussed was the original intent of the author. The same story can also be given very different themes in the hands of different authors. For instance, the source for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Matteo Bandello's The Tragical History of Romeo and Juliet emphasizes the perils of dishonesty and disobedience.

Etymology

The word 'theme' comes from the Old French word tesme (French: thème), from Latin thema, from Ancient Greek θέμα (théma), from τίθημι (tithemi), meaning “‘I put, place’”, which in turn is reduplicative from the Proto-Indo-European word *dʰeh₁-, meaning ‘to put, place, do’.

Classic themes

Themes differ from culture to culture, but there is a general set of "classic themes" that are prevalent in all cultures and histories. These themes have their roots in the oral traditions of different cultures, and recur in a range or literary works.

Redemption

The theme of redemption is a major literary device. The protagonist of the text will often have committed a crime of some sort, and must succeed in a quest to atone for their crime. The journey of the protagonist is often both mental as well as physical, as he or she struggles against her inner demons and base desires.

Techniques

There are several literary techniques that are often used to express themes.

Leitwortstil

Leitwortstil is the 'the purposeful repetition of words' in a given literary piece that "usually expresses a motif or theme important to the given story". This device dates back to the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights, which connects several tales together in a story cycle. The storytellers of the tales relied on this technique "to shape the constituent members of their story cycles into a coherent whole."¹

Thematic patterning

Thematic patterning is "the distribution of recurrent thematic concepts and moralistic motifs among the various incidents and frames of a story. In a skillfully crafted tale, thematic patterning may be arranged so as to emphasize the unifying argument or salient idea which disparate events and disparate frames have in common". This technique also dates back to the One Thousand and One Nights.²

Reference

1. ^ Heath, Peter (May 1994), "Reviewed work(s): Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights by David Pinault", International Journal of Middle East Studies (Cambridge University Press) 26 (2): 358-360 [359-60] 
2. ^ Heath, Peter (May 1994), "Reviewed work(s): Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights by David Pinault", International Journal of Middle East Studies (Cambridge University Press) 26 (2): 358-360 [360] 

External links

• Wictionary definition

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