Theme (narrative)

About: Theme (narrative) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 13050 publications have been published within this topic receiving 159511 citations. The topic is also known as: narrative theme.

The World Health Report 2012 that wasn't.

Abstract: The PLOS Medicine editors comment on the history of the World Health Organization's latest World Health Report, originally planned for publication in 2012, and the outcomes of the journal's collaboration with WHO on the intended theme of "no health without research".

Middle English Literature

Abstract: Virtually all of Bennett's chapter on Gower (pp. 407-29) is devoted to "Confessio Amantis," and it is for the most part an expanded version of the introduction to his "Selections from John Gower" (1968): one will find very much the same characterizations of Gower's relationship with Chaucer, of his narrative style, of his poetic achievement, of his general themes, and of the roles of the various characters in his poem, fleshed out with considerably more explanation and illustration. Bennett's Gower is a skilled poet and storyteller who is underestimated because of the unobtrusiveness of his art and a man of broad sympathy and insight, characteristics that Bennett illustrates with discussions of "Ceix and Alcione" and "Florent" and with brief quotations from other tales. Gower's most important model and predecessor is Ovid, not only for the tales that he borrowed but also for the topical references and philosophical statements with which his poem begins and ends. His confession frame derives from "Roman de la Rose" and "De Planctu Naturae" but it would also have been seen as a literary adaptation of sacramental penance, and the "therapeutic" function of the sacrament provided the "point of contact" to the treatment of love as a sickness in contemporary love-literature. The general theme of the poem is love: Bennett is not persuaded by attempts to see it as an expression of political or social doctrine, nor is he moved by the efforts to construct a precise moral underpinning for all of the various elements that it contains. Gower's "honeste love" links courtesy, charity, and the practical aims of marriage and the begetting of children. Genius does not represent a single point of view or value but carries out a composite and in some ways ambivalent role. And the unity of the poem is provided loosely by a group of five "distinctly Gowerian" concepts or themes: "Love and Charite as opposed to Lust and Will . . . ; Peace and Rest as opposed to War and Discord; Reason and Wit as against 'unreason'--folly and passion; Nature or Kind, and Mortality; Fortune and Necessity (but with Providence guiding them)" (p. 425). Bennett's view of CA is firmly rooted in a literal reading of Gower's "lessons" but it is also broad and generous and sensitive to the expressive qualities of Gower's verse. Review by A.J. Minnis in TLS, 6 February 1987, p. 140. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 6.1]

Marital Discord in English Comedy from Dryden to Fielding

Abstract: Marital discord in English comedy goes back at least as far as Noah's wife and remains a common theme in twentieth-century drama, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf being an obvious example. Nonetheless the subject has been little studied. We still tend to think of comedy in terms of a boy-gets-girl romance pattern or, more broadly, a structure encompassing a movement from adversity to prosperity.1 But many "comedies" do not present such a structure (Volpone, Le Misanthrope), and marital discord is a significant theme in, and even a focus for, a surprising number of plays. This is particularly true in the years around 1700, when a rising debate about the legal status of women and reform of the divorce laws made the subject topical. The myth is still current that "Restoration comedy" is hostile to marriage. In the common "gay couple" pattern, both male and female rail against marriage, vowing to remain free-the male insisting on his libertinism, the female on her independence. But even there love usually conquers wanderlust, and witty antagonism is abandoned for the deeper satisfactions of living happily ever after. Thus romantic convention is almost always served, even when the love-duel is seriously used to suggest the difficulty of making a good and viable marriage. In many plays a "proviso scene" is used to suggest the working out of a satisfactory marital arrangement-the most famous, of course, being the one in Congreve's The Way of the World (1700), in which Millamant wonders if she must "dwindle to a wife." Occasionally, however, a playwright will take a hard look at what happens after marriage, as in Otway's bitter The Atheist (1683), Southerne's brilliantly nasty The Wilres Excuse (1691), or Vanbrugh's The Provok'd Wife (1697). And after 1700 "reform" comedies focusing on marital reconciliations become increasingly common. There are two reasons for studying marital discord comedy in the period delimited here. First, several of the most interesting and important plays from the 1660-1737 period have seemed peculiar and even repulsive because scholars have not fully recognized that they represent serious social commentary on contemporary problems. Second, I want to suggest that writers' views on marriageespecially as they are expressed in marital discord comedy-are an important key to the shifting ideological stances which underlie the complicated transition from seventeenthto eighteenth-century comedy. Many attempts have been made to trace the transition from "Restoration" to "sentimental" comedy, employing a variety of terms and touchstones. One of the best such studies is John Harrington Smith's The Gay Couple in Restoration Comedy.2 Smith uses the gay couple and its witty love-game as an indicator of

Building on success

Abstract: EVERY SPRING, HUNDREDS OF black chemists and chemical engineers come together to celebrate science and develop career skills, as well as strike up new friendships and rekindle old ones. This year's gathering in Los Angeles on April 9-14 was the 33rd such annual meeting of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists & Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE). With its unique mixture of technical presentations, networking opportunities, and professional development workshops, the NOBCChE annual conference had something to offer each of the nearly 640 attendees, who ranged in age from high school students to retirees. The activities at this year's meeting all centered on the theme "The Secret Is Out, Find It at NOBCChE." "This year, the secret is out about NOBCChE- and what better place to let it out than in California," said NOBCChE President Joseph S. Francisco at the opening of the meeting. Francisco is a chemistry ...