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In contemporary literary studies, a theme is a central topic, subject, or message within a narrative. [1] Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject". [2] Themes are often distinguished from premises.
Literary movements are a way to divide literature into categories of similar philosophical, topical, or aesthetic features, as opposed to divisions by genre or period. Like other categorizations, literary movements provide language for comparing and discussing literary works. These terms are helpful for curricula or anthologies. [1]
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
In structuralism-influenced studies of mythology, a mytheme is a fundamental generic unit of narrative structure (typically involving a relationship between a character, an event, and a theme) from which myths are thought to be constructed [1] [2] —a minimal unit that is always found shared with other, related mythemes [citation needed] and reassembled in various ways ("bundled") [3] or ...
Genres are formed shared literary conventions that change over time as new genres emerge while others fade. As such, genres are not wholly fixed categories of writing; rather, their content evolves according to social and cultural contexts and contemporary questions of morals and norms.
Some examples of topoi are the following: the locus amoenus (for example, the imaginary world of Arcadia) and the locus horridus (for example, Dante's Inferno); the idyll; cemetery poetry (see the Spoon River Anthology); love and death (in Greek, eros and thanatos), love as disease and love as death, (see the character of Dido in Virgil's Aeneid);
The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, [5] [6] but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as ...
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. [1] Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history , moral philosophy, social philosophy, and interdisciplinary themes relevant to how people interpret meaning . [ 1 ]