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Napoleon, a typical great man, said to have created the "Napoleonic" era through his military and political genius. The great man theory is an approach to the study of history popularised in the 19th century according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior ...
The contrasting three, where only the third has positive value, for example, The Three Little Pigs, two of whose houses are blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. The final or dialectical form of three, where, as with Goldilocks and her bowls of porridge, the first is wrong in one way, the second in an opposite way, and the third is "just right".
Great Man theory and zeitgeist theory may be included in two main areas of thought in psychology. [7] For instance, Great Man theory is very similar to the trait approach . Trait researchers are interested in identifying the various personality traits that underline human behaviors such as conformity, leadership, or other social behaviors.
Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza, as illustrated by Gustave Doré: the characters' contrasting qualities [1] are reflected here even in their physical appearances. In any narrative, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character, typically, a character who contrasts with the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist.
An example of an expression of the concept in a qualified sense would be "Hector is the definition of greatness" or "Napoleon was one of the greatest wartime leaders". In the unqualified sense it might be stated " George Washington achieved greatness within his own lifetime", thus implying that "greatness" is a definite and identifiable quality.
Archetypal literary criticism argues that archetypes determine the form and function of literary works, and therefore, that a text's meaning is shaped by cultural and psychological myths. Archetypes are the unknowable basic forms personified or concretized in recurring images, symbols, or patterns which may include motifs such as the quest or ...
Eliot's theory of literary tradition has been criticised for its limited definition of what constitutes the canon of that tradition. He assumes the authority to choose what represents great poetry, and his choices have been criticised on several fronts.
Metanarrative has a specific definition in narratology and communications theory. According to John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, a metanarrative "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience " [ 19 ] – a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other "little stories" within ...