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A narrative motif can be created through the use of imagery, structural components, language, and other elements throughout literature. The flute in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman is a recurrent sound motif that conveys rural and idyllic notions.
The term was originated by Angus MacPhail for film, adopted by Alfred Hitchcock, and later extended to a similar device in other fiction. The MacGuffin technique is common in films, especially thrillers. Usually, the MacGuffin is revealed in the first act, and thereafter declines in importance. It can reappear at the climax of the story but may ...
t. e. A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. [1] Keith and Lundburg describe a trope as "a substitution of a word or phrase by a less literal word or phrase". [2] The word trope has also undergone a semantic change and now also describes commonly ...
A leitmotif or Leitmotiv [1] ( / ˌlaɪtmoʊˈtiːf /) is a "short, recurring musical phrase " [2] associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of idée fixe or motto-theme. [2] The spelling leitmotif is an anglicization of the German Leitmotiv ( IPA: [ˈlaɪtmoˌtiːf] ), literally meaning ...
Literature. This glossary of literary terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in the discussion, classification, analysis, and criticism of all types of literature, such as poetry, novels, and picture books, as well as of grammar, syntax, and language techniques. For a more complete glossary of terms relating to poetry in ...
The Gothic double is a literary motif which refers to the divided personality of a character. Closely linked to the Doppelgänger, which first appeared in the 1796 novel Siebenkäs by Johann Paul Richter, the double figure emerged in Gothic literature in the late 18th century due to a resurgence of interest in mythology and folklore which explored notions of duality, such as the fetch in Irish ...
a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that other statements, patterns of behavior, and objects copy, emulate, or "merge" into. Informal synonyms frequently used for this definition include "standard example", "basic example", and the longer-form "archetypal example"; mathematical archetypes often appear as ...
Ubi sunt (literally "where are they") is a rhetorical question taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?, meaning "Where are those who were before us?" Ubi nunc...? ("Where now?") is a common variant. [1] Sometimes interpreted to indicate nostalgia, the ubi sunt motif is a meditation on mortality and life's transience.