Theme (narrative)

In contemporary literary studies, a theme is the central topic a text treats. Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject".

The most common contemporary understanding of theme is an idea or point that is central to a story, which can often be summed in a single word (e.g. love, death, betrayal). Typical examples of themes of this type are conflict between the individual and society; coming of age; humans in conflict with technology; nostalgia; and the dangers of unchecked ambition. A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel. An example of this would be the theme loneliness in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, wherein many of the characters seem to be lonely. It may differ from the thesis—the text's or author's implied worldview.

A story may have several themes. Themes often explore historically common or cross-culturally recognizable ideas, such as ethical questions, and are usually implied rather than stated explicitly. An example of this would be whether one should live a seemingly better life, at the price of giving up parts of one's humanity, which is a theme in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the components of fiction.

Theme

Theme or themes may refer to:

Art

See also

Theme (Byzantine district)

The themes or themata (Greek: θέματα; singular θέμα, thema) were the main administrative divisions of the middle Byzantine Empire. They were established in the mid-7th century in the aftermath of the Slavic invasion of Balkans and Muslim conquests of parts of Byzantine territory, and replaced the earlier provincial system established by Diocletian and Constantine the Great. In their origin, the first themes were created from the areas of encampment of the field armies of the East Roman army, and their names corresponded to the military units that had existed in those areas. The theme system reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries, as older themes were split up and the conquest of territory resulted in the creation of new ones. The original theme system underwent significant changes in the 11th and 12th centuries, but the term remained in use as a provincial and financial circumscription, until the very end of the Empire.

History

Background

During the late 6th and early 7th centuries, the Eastern Roman Empire was under frequent attack from all sides. The Sassanid Empire was pressing from the east on Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia. Slavs and Avars raided Thrace, Macedonia, Illyricum and Greece and settled in the Balkans. The Lombards occupied northern Italy, largely unopposed. In order to face the mounting pressure, in the more distant provinces of the West, recently regained by Justinian I (r. 527–565), Emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) combined supreme civil and military authority in the person of an exarch, forming the exarchates of Ravenna and Africa. These developments overturned the strict division of civil and military offices, which had been one of the cornerstones of the reforms of Diocletian (r. 284–305). In essence however they merely recognized and formalized the greater prominence of the local general, or magister militum, over the respective civilian praetorian prefect as a result of the provinces' precarious security situation.

Thematic vowel

In Indo-European studies, a thematic vowel or theme vowel is the vowel *e or *o from ablaut placed before the ending of a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the Indo-European languages with this vowel are thematic, and those without it are athematic. Used more generally, a thematic vowel is any vowel found at the end of the stem of a word.

Proto-Indo-European

PIE verbs and nominals (nouns and adjectives) consist of three parts:

The thematic vowel, if present, occurs at the end of the suffix (which may include other vowels or consonants) and before the ending:

Athematic forms, by contrast, have a suffix ending in a consonant, or no suffix at all (or arguably a null suffix):

For several reasons, athematic forms are thought to be older, and the thematic vowel was likely an innovation of late PIE: Athematic paradigms (inflection patterns) are more "irregular", exhibiting ablaut and mobile accent, while the thematic paradigms can be seen as a simplification or regularisation of verbal and nominal grammar. In the Anatolian languages, which were the earliest to split from PIE, thematic verbs are rare or absent. Furthermore, during late PIE and in the older daughter languages, a number of athematic forms were replaced by thematic ones, as in prehistoric Greek *thes- 'god' versus *thes-o- > Classical Greek θεός (theós).