Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

Theme

Definitions

• In common usage "theme" refers simply to the subject or topic treated in a discourse or a part of it...in literary studies, theme is also used in a number of more specialized senses, especially as a recurrent element (or particular type of recurrent element) in literary works, and as the doctrinal content of a literary work. (The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 1281)

• [Etymology: Middle English teme, theme, from Anglo-French and Latin; Anglo-French, from Latin thema, from Greek, literally, "something laid down," from tithenai "to place"] (Merriam-Webster)

  1 a: a subject or topic of discourse or of artistic representation <guilt and punishment is the theme of the story> b: a specific and distinctive quality, characteristic, or concern <the campaign has lacked a theme>

  2: stem 4

  3: a written exercise : composition <a research theme>

  4: a melodic subject of a musical composition or movement

• The theme of a work is the large idea or concept it is dealing with. In order to grasp the theme of a work we have to stand back from the text and see what sort of general experience or subject links all its details together. The easiest way of doing this is to sum up the work in as few words as possible. For example, we can say that the theme of Shakespeare's Macbeth is evil. We might feel that this is the theme of several of Shakespeare's plays, and we should be right. Many texts do have the same basic theme, and all texts deal with common or familiar themes. What we are interested in as critics is the particular way in which the them is handled in a particular text: we move from the general to the distinctive. (Peck and Coyle)

Reference

The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Eds. Alex Preminger, Terry V. F. Brogan, and Frank J. Warnke. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993.

Peck, John and Martin Coyle. Literary Terms and Criticism. New Edition. London: Macmillan, 1993.

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Last updated August 6, 2008