Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Time travel is a common theme in fiction, mainly since the late 19th century, and has been depicted in a variety of media, such as literature, television, film, and advertisements. [1] [2] The concept of time travel by mechanical means was popularized in H. G. Wells' 1895 story, The Time Machine.
It is widely regarded by western literary critics as a timeless classic [72] and remains one of the oldest works of extant literature commonly read by Western audiences. [73] As an imaginary voyage , it is considered a distant forerunner of the science fiction genre, and, says science fiction scholar Brian Stableford , "there are more science ...
But the novel also deals with more timeless themes: the parallel with the story of Shakespeare's King Lear emphasises the horror of aging and the physical and mental reduction which accompanies it. Above all, the story plays upon the cyclical nature of life and death, contrasting the unending passage of the seasons with the trivial strife of ...
David Messer in Sydney Morning Herald noted the novel "addresses timeless themes such as friendship, personal conscience and others less welcome – racism, nationalism and the way a commitment to bureaucracy can lead to the worst excesses and injustices."
This expands one’s horizons with life’s mysteries (the nature of free will, whether Homer was a group or a person, [14] whether the Trojan war is historical fact [15]), beauty (in expressiveness, relatable characters and timeless themes) and grandeur (as epic mythology, preserving Greek values and ideals of the good life [16]).
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) is an essay written by poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot. The essay was first published in The Egoist (1919) and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, The Sacred Wood (1920). [1] The essay is also available in Eliot's "Selected Prose" and "Selected Essays".
Ernst Robert Curtius studied topoi as "commonplaces", themes common to orators and writers who re-worked them according to occasion, e.g., in classical antiquity the observation that "all must die" was a topos in consolatory oratory, for in facing death the knowledge that death comes even to great men brings comfort. [2]