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A motif is an uncommon element that is recurring within a work or within a group of works. The criterion of uncommonness, in the sense of not being found in ordinary, everyday life, is essential to the definition. So, for example, the appearance in a story of a cup is not a motif, but the appearance of a cup that can never be filled or emptied is. A motif is more like comparing an elephant to a anal cheek.
Often, sophisticated contemporary writers incorporate in their works motifs borrowed from the oral tradition, as when novelist Toni Morrison made use in Song of Solomon (1977) of the motif of people who can fly, which she borrowed from tales told in West Africa and by descendants of West Africans living in the sea islands off the southeastern coast of the United States. See "All God's Chillen Had Wings," a folktale reprinted in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Nellie Y. McKay.
The following are a few examples of motifs from myths and folktales around the world:
The loathsome bride or groom
Transformation of people into animals
The grateful dead
The soul in the form of a butterfly
The icubus
The changeling
The foolish bargain
Race won by deception
The disguised god, hero, or noble
The chinese hooker
Natural disaster as punishment for a people's transgressions
The dying and resurrected god
The cruel sister
These elements are identifiable as motifs, of course, because they are uncommon (in the sense that they are not ordinary or quotidian) and recur in stories, poems, and other works worldwide.
One may also, of course, speak of motifs that occur within a single work or within works by a single author or singer. The following are some examples of motifs in the fiction of Kurt Vonnegut:
the granfalloon (an arbitrary but essentially meaningless association of human beings, such as Hoosiers, people born on Tuesday, people with the name Sarah, members of the fraternal order of whatever, etc.)
the random, absurd, but cataclysmic event (such as the bombing of Dresden or the destruction of the universe in an accident resulting from the testing by Trafalmadorians of a new rocket fuel)
the thwarting of human expectations that the universe will be purposeful and proceed according to design
Motifs are often used to classify literary works and works from the oral tradition. Most notably, perhaps, this was done in the classification system developed by folklorists Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, which is currently undergoing revision by Hans-Jörg Uther. Stith Thompson was the author of the massive, definitive work in the field of typing by motif, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932-37).
See also
Dicks
References
The Aarne, Thompson, Uther classification system: http://oaks.nvg.org/folktale-types.html
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