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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.


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Book
01 Jan 1975
TL;DR: In this paper, a story of four generations of an oil-rich family trying to live out the century without drawing blood under the unblinking Texas sky is described, and the protagonist is a rich sonofabitch who was loved by every woman he ever met -and some who only heard of him.
Abstract: A tale of four generations of an oil-rich family trying to live out the century without drawing blood under the unblinking Texas sky. Hiram, the family's patriarch, is a rich sonofabitch who was loved by every woman he ever met - and some who only heard of him. Hiram is a teller of tales, a cowboy.

155 citations

Book
01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: Pasley's "The Tyranny of Printers" as discussed by the authors assesses the role of American newspapers in politics into the early Jacksonian era, but the emphasis is on the period after 1790.
Abstract: "The Tyranny of Printers": Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic. By Jeffrey L. Pasley. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001. Pp. xv, 517. Illustrations, maps, appendix. $37.50.) In "The Tyranny of Printers, " Jeffrey Pasley assesses the role of American newspapers in politics into the early Jacksonian era, but the emphasis is on the period after 1790. Offering "an analytical narrative" (22) replete with incisive quotations from primary sources, this well-written book is rooted in biographical studies of individual politically partisan editors. Pasley, who focuses on Republican party editors, is sensitive to regional variations, especially the important point that southern editors tended to be gentlemen while their northern counterparts typically came from the lower or middle ranks. Pasley does not ignore the partisan Federalist party press, and his informative analysis of it buttresses some of his main arguments. "The Tyranny of Printers, " with upwards of 500 pages and an accompanying Web site, bristles with analytical commentary on a range of topics. Though no brief review can offer an adequate summary, four core themes stand out. The first is that "the newspaper-based party . . . dominated the American political scene" (17) from the late 1790s through the antebellum years. Indeed, "the newspaper press was the political system's central institution" (3), and after 1800, politicians felt the need to engage in a "journalistic arms race" (237). The second basic contention is that partisan Republican editors became "professional politicians" (19) who shaped their party as they strove to democratize American politics. Indeed, the republican editors' "perennial theme" trumpeted the democratizing ideal that "ordinary citizens" had "the positive duty . . . to engage in politics, express public opinion, and influence government policy from the outside" (85). Pasley's third central argument is that the republican editors' goal of having all white males participate in politics not coincidentally gave the printers both "an escape route from the industrializing tendencies" in the newspaper trade and the potential to wield "political influence" (47). The fourth basic point is that genteel political leaders, Republican as well as Federalist, were always uncomfortable with partisan editors from artisan backgrounds. In fact, the gentlemen politicians mounted an unsuccessful "political gentrification campaign" (359) in the early 1800s. These core themes thus highlight socioeconomic and cultural as well as political conflict. Pasley also comments extensively on the "remarkable flexibility of the classical republican ideas" (75) and their influence. In addition, he assays how much and what kind of financial support political editors received. The book's Web site (http://pasleybrothers.com/newspols), which provides data on individual editors, merits comment. Though the Web site can be updated as Pasley continues to study this period and carries his analysis forward in future volumes, it is frustrating to check for evidence about groups of editors only to find an endnote directing the reader to the Web site. Some of the Web site's current information, especially the specifics on political offices held by the 1790s partisan editors, could easily and should have been included in the book. Moreover, text and endnote material is often not well placed. For example, crucial general statistics about editors typically appear in endnotes long after questions about specific arguments have naturally come to mind. …

155 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Chapters from 42 expert contributors renowned for their work in investigation of traumatic brain injury are assembled, basic science: overview; preclinical studies, and clinical directions.
Abstract: Miller and Hayes have assembled chapters from 42 expert contributors renowned for their work in investigation of traumatic brain injury. They have divided the text into three main sections, basic science: overview; preclinical studies, and clinical directions. Organising the text in this way the authors have struck a theme …

152 citations

Book
13 Dec 1991
TL;DR: This article investigated the discourse functions of cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in contemporary English and found that it is necessary to invoke discourse-relevant notions such as information, topic and theme.
Abstract: This book is a corpus-based investigation of cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in contemporary English. It is the first study of such constructions to fully explore the view, now widespread among linguists, that any attempt to satisfactorily explain their structural and functional characteristics must refer to concepts directly related to their use in communication. Its findings reveal that it is necessary to invoke such discourse-relevant notions as information, topic and theme. By using a standard written corpus and a standard spoken corpus of British English, Peter Collins is able to analyse systematically the discourse-functions of clefts and pseudo-clefts, provide information on the frequency of these constructions in different genres, and prevent the tidying-up' found in examples devised by the linguist. It is an excellent study of the interrelations of grammar, pragmatics and discourse, and a persuasive illustration of the importance of corpus-based approaches to linguistic description.

151 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, this paper argued that a person's sameness within different behaviors can be described as variations on one identity theme (Lichtenstein), and that the interpreter himself plays a behavioral variation on his identity theme.
Abstract: Understanding the receptivity of literature, how one work admits many readers, begins with an analogy: unity is to text as identity is to self. Unity here means the way all a text’s features can be related through one central theme. Identity describes a person’s sameness within different behaviors as variations on one identity theme (Lichtenstein). To find unity or identity, however, the interpreter himself plays a behavioral variation on his identity theme. In interpreting, his identity re-creates itself as he shapes the text to match his characteristic defenses, fantasies, and coherences. Thus, what a poet says about fictional, political, or scientific texts expresses the same identity theme as the poems he writes. To understand reading, criticism, and any knowing or making in symbols, then, we need to let go the Cartesian craving for objectivity and accept the themes in ourselves with which we construe the world—including literary works.

151 citations


Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20221
2021347
2020497
2019509
2018449
2017404