Thematic Coherence Within Narratives: A Feature or a Bug?

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-25
Author(s):  
Noam Goldberg ◽  
Vidhura Malkowsky ◽  
Talya Ohana ◽  
Dov Greenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Coherence

The Panegyrics of Domitian in Martial Book 9

Ramus ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Garthwaite
Keyword(s):  
Rich Diversity ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Thematic Coherence ◽  
Classical Age

The rich diversity of Martial's Epigrams makes up, in Duff's words, ‘one of the most extraordinary galleries of literary pictures, vignettes, miniatures, portraits, caricatures, sometimes almost thumbnail sketches' of the Classical Age. Yet the books are by no means merely random or haphazard assortments. Like other Roman poets, Martial was attentive to the need to impose a sense of order and continuity on his published material. Naturally the very number of poems, as well as their varied inspiration and often impromptu composition, would militate against any overall thematic coherence. Moreover, Martial was also keen to exploit the inherent variety of the epigrammatic genre; thus, in the preface to Book 8, he says that he has interspersed more trivial and jocular material among his panegyrics of the emperor to prevent continuous eulogies from becoming tiresome to their recipient.

Pattern and Theme in Chrétien's ‘Yvain’

Traditio ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 145-189
Author(s):  
Edward C. Schweitzer
Keyword(s):  
Essential Elements ◽  
The Other ◽  
Common Source ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Ultimate Source ◽  
Christian Psychology ◽  
Erec Et Enide ◽  
Thematic Coherence

Yvain, Chrétien's masterpiece, has been conventionally seen as a counterpoise to Erec et Enide, attempting to reconcile the conflicting claims of love and chivalry. The several versions of this interpretation are misleading, if not quite wrong, because they divert our attention from what is special about Yvain to what it has in common with Erec. In all of them the lion is peripheral, although for Chrétien himself the lion gave the romance its name: Le Chevalier au lion. I intend to argue that Yvain is rather a critique of the Arthurian ideal, using patristic — or, if one prefers, Christian — psychology to show its hero fall victim to the sins of superbia, invidia, and ira in the first part and triumph over them in the second. Chrétien, I propose, made the lion a symbol of ira as a power of the soul and as ambivalent emotion, so that the two-part figure of the Chevalier au Lion — Yvain with his lion — dramatizes the restoration of ideal order within Yvain himself. Since the story of Yvain derives almost certainly from a Celtic source, Chrétien's originality consists not in the main events but in their disposition and in the emphasis assigned them in order to reveal their psychological and moral significance. I shall use comparisons with the Welsh story of Owein and the Lady of the Fountain to set that originality in relief, for whether the Welsh romance itself is the ultimate source of Yvain or both develop from some common source, it very likely approximates the form of the story prior to Chrétien's revision. It contains all the essential elements of Chrétien's romance — except Yvain's meeting with the hermit and the dispute between the daughters of the Lord of Noire Espine — masterly in detail but loosely connected, without moral focus or thematic coherence. Yvain, on the other hand, is distinguished, as this essay will try to show, by Chrétien's use of a progression of parallel incidents, together with the symbolic figure of the lion, to reveal gradually the meaning of the whole.

A Thematic Coherence Study of a Bilingual Corpus of Articles on Oil and Gas Research

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-142
Author(s):  
F. V. Krasnov ◽  
M. E. Shvartsman ◽  
A. V. Dimentov ◽  
A. I. Sen
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Thematic Coherence

Dylan Thomas and The “Biblical Rhythm”

PMLA ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 79 (5) ◽  
pp. 631-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
William T. Moynihan
Keyword(s):  
Kenneth Burke ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Dylan Thomas ◽  
Thematic Coherence

Despite its appearance as a miscellaneous collection of lyrics, Dylan Thomas' poetry is a closely unified body of work. Poetic unity customarily reveals itself in cohesive imagery (what Kenneth Burke calls “symbolic equations”), and in the repetition and development of related themes. Thomas' Collected Poems possesses such imagistic and thematic coherence, and these images and themes, furthermore, have as their subsuming source the Bible.

scholarly journals Destruction of Communicative Pragmatics in Contemporary Absurdist Dramaturgic Texts

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
Valeria Koroliova ◽  
Iryna Popova
Keyword(s):  
Formal Structure ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Arbitrary Choice ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Chaotic Nature ◽  
Linguistic Units ◽  
Communicative Role ◽  
Thematic Coherence

The aim of the article is characteristics of mechanisms of pragmatics distraction in communication of active participants of modern Ukrainian plays with features of the theatre of the absurdity. Structural and contextual mechanisms of dialogic speech depragmatization are singled out on factual material. In a dramatic dialogue absurdity is explained as a purposeful instruction to convey the thought about illogicalness and chaotic nature of reality, the aimlessness of a human being. The main methods of the study are descriptive, context-interpreting and presuppositional. Study results. One of absurdity occurrence mechanisms is depragmatization – purposeful non-normative usage of language pragmatic resources. We identify structural and contextual violations within depragmatization. Structural violations are characteristic for an absurdist drama in which characters’ cues do not have illocutionary and thematic coherence. Another type of structural violations is conscious violations of formal structure of linguistic units. Role exchange, during which an active participant takes over someone else’s communicative role, is an example of contextual depragmatization. Within contextual violations we also identify the group of cognitive violations which is based on non-observance of causally consecutive and logical connections. Anomalies based on an arbitrary choice of language stylistic means, which are uncoordinated with general principles of stylistic formalization of the text, are considered the contextual variety of depragmatization. Conclusions. Structural and contextual communicative violations are used by playwrights to activate the sense of the situational absurdity depicted in a work. Active participants of drama of the absurdity communicate without communicative purpose and taking into account situational needs, which results in actualization of pragmatic potential of used linguistic units, falsification of meaningful speech.

scholarly journals Keep Calm and Carry On: The Relations Between Narrative Coherence, Trauma, Social Support, Psychological Well-Being, and Cortisol Responses

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauranne Vanaken ◽  
Tom Smeets ◽  
Patricia Bijttebier ◽  
Dirk Hermans
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Narrative Coherence ◽  
Anxiety Levels ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Thematic Coherence

In order to explain trauma resilience, previous research has been investigating possible risk and protective factors, both on an individual and a contextual level. In this experimental study, we examined narrative coherence and social support in relation to trauma resilience. Participants were asked to write about a turning point memory, after which they did the Maastricht Acute Stress Test, our lab analog of a traumatic event. Following, half of the participants received social support, whereas the other half did not. Afterwards, all participants wrote a narrative on the traumatic event. Moment-to-moment fluctuations in psychological and physiological well-being throughout the experiment were investigated with state anxiety questionnaires and cortisol measures. Results showed that narratives of traumatic experiences were less coherent than narratives of turning point memories. However, contrary to our predictions, coherence, and, in particular, thematic coherence, related positively to anxiety levels. Possibly, particular types of thematic coherence are a non-adaptive form of coping, which reflect unfinished attempts at meaning-making and are more similar to continuous rumination than to arriving at a resolution. Furthermore, coherence at baseline could not buffer against the impact of trauma on anxiety levels in this study. Contrary to our hypotheses, social support did not have the intended beneficial effects on coherence, neither on well-being. Multiple explanations as to why our support manipulation remained ineffective are suggested. Remarkably, lower cortisol levels at baseline and after writing about the turning point memory predicted higher coherence in the trauma narratives. This may suggest that the ability to remain calm in difficult situations does relate to the ability to cope adaptively with future difficult experiences. Clinical and social implications of the present findings are discussed, and future research recommendations on the relations between narrative coherence, social support, and trauma resilience are addressed.

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