Motif (narrative)

The motif (French motif: Motivation, drive; mlat motivum < Latin movere: moving, motus: Motion. ) In the literature, painting and music borrowed from a narrative block, " a smaller material unit that still not a whole plot, a fable includes, but is already a substantive, situation excessive element. "

The image is by internal ( structural) unit, but without concrete an act or content. "It is [ ... ] the elementary, germs and composable components of, " is a " chord ", an " action " approach, without to " bound fixed names and events [ ... ] to be ." Thus we find, for example, the motive of love of enemies of the figure of the biblical Jesus up in Werfel's novel Verdi, the crime that comes to light, from Sophocles' Oedipus tyrannos on Hartmann von Aue Gregorius up to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, the man between two women by the figure of Abraham to Walser's figure of Gottlieb Zürn in the moment of love or the subject of the hostile brothers from Biblical figures of Cain and Abel about Romulus and Remus up to Schiller's the Robbers.

The content of basic shape of the motif can be described schematically as a rule, for example, as a motive of the triangular relationship, the unknown homecomer or doppelganger or the hostile brothers. The same applies to the type of design, such as the loner, the bohemian, etc., as well as for the spatial and temporal motif, for example, the ruin of the race with the time of the underworld visit or of recognition ( Anagnorisis ), etc.

Conceptual history

The design concept comes from the medieval language of scholars, in which the subject an intellectual impulse or an idea or an idea called that shapes the characteristics or properties of a speech.

In the 18th century, the term is increasingly transferred to the musical and visual arts, initially in the field of music as a term for the smallest melodic unit of a musical composition. Towards the end of the 18th century, the motif term is also used in the technical language of the Italian schools of painting to describe a figurative or ornamental element within a painting or work of art.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe leads the design concept as an art- critical category in the field of literature, of both structural moments, such as the function of the motif for the construction of a literary work or text, as well as a fundamental anthropological interest in view of the "phenomenon of the human spirit " touched.

Based on this, use the Brothers Grimm the notion of the subject as well as in the literary research and analysis; from the mid-19th century, the research branch of the subject history is rooted in the literature. The design concept is here on two different levels using one hand with regard to the inherent structural analysis of texts, but on the other hand also in terms of the intertextual references.

Demarcation

While the subject up separates from the fabric, in the concrete definition of it is only one block, it borders towards the bottom of the general and any broader issue, or, where this is based on figures, the type, but also the clearly held icon or picture from.

In contrast to the subject matter neither an act of continuity still has a fixation on certain persons and contains no erzählbaren course content. From the theme, which is basically characterized by greater abstractness, the subject is generally differs in that it has more concrete manifestations.

In the German literary terminology, the concept of the subject usually refers to the smallest semantic unit, is composed of a combination of motifs while the fabric and the theme refers to the abstract idea of a literary work.

In the English and American literature, the term has, however motif theme in addition to the more general notion prevailed that includes both the fabric, the theme, the idea or the content of a literary work with.

The transitions between these terms are therefore often blurred. Between the theme of jealousy and the type of the jealous husband and the subject of the cuckold or deceived husband, for example, hardly a boundary line can be discerned. Now also fell from the action-triggering momentum inherent in a subject, but can on the other side of an issue, such as jealousy, even at a simple ( character ) train fuse together. The difference here is constituted mainly of the weight and function: Even if so bears traces of pride Hoffmann's Kater Murr to a great extent, this arrogance is not in contrast to Faust I here the subject.

Especially in poetry, the subject may be reduced to the brink of an image but then, as the packed form of the poem is suitable to better concentration and intertextuality. Thus, the topos of the fountain of the biblical patriarchal stories that makes the water point, a locus amoenus similar, to a place of love stories, but then also transports the nuance of meaning of the prison with the sale of Joseph, in the poetry of Celan, like Rilke's still as an image Rose already understandable to the subject.

Rand-/Nebenmotiv

In addition to the central motif (also: core subject or main theme ) that pervades the text, the literature also knows the drama of the extracted edge motif ( also: secondary motif or Füllmotiv ), which has an embellishing function. Thus we find with the figures of Melusine and the ARMGARD in Theodor Fontane's Der Stechlin example, the motif of the disparate sisters, but that does not occupy a central role in the system of the novel. Through the few space that can be given to the side designs fulfillment, cultural or intertextual recourse to a pool of already traditional designs is more clearly then necessary.

In order to be understood in its universality, the subject must therefore refer to a form of collective memory, in which it is kept to its comprehensibility. Thus, it is also the smallest element of the narrative, which "has the power to get yourself in the lore ". The design history is devoted to the study of the formation and development of such a tradition of a motif.

The "blind design"

Failure by the settlement of a (secondary) Motives and impedes the flow of the text or action or set a motif that comes in contradiction with another, this is called even a blind subject. A blind subject is thus a " [ ... ] distracting, irrelevant for the action sequence motif". A psychoanalytic interpretation of the motives (and not the colloquial > subject 'in the sense of a psychologized motivation ) provide Sperber and Spitzer as well as grains. Note that this restriction on a "general basic human situation " tries a constricting categorization, which then facilitates an interdisciplinary and comparative cultural history and comes as close to the Jungian archetypes.

The theme

Has the subject a priority influence on the text, either by an ordering procedure, whether by sole systematic repetition, it is also called leitmotif. The exact structure of the aesthetic terminology borrowed from the music leitmotiv is disputed. While " formulaic repeating certain phrases " are not considered sufficient to talk about a theme, seems to be the requirement that one have to strive for " dense symbolic motif fabric as a unifying principle " to be as overwhelming as quantitative imprecise. Usually, however, have the function of leitmotifs to have hinted the mood of previous situations. They serve as the ideological structuring of the text and the symbolic depression and make some kind of emotional memory in literary text dar.