The Literary Motif: A Definition and Evaluation

Since the rise of the New Criticism in the Thirties, a criticism preoccupied with the work-in-itself and consequently with literary technique, there has been a steadily increasing flow of critical essays primarily concerned with language. One important phase of this study of language has been the attempt to discover clusters or families of related words or phrases that, by virtue of their frequency and particular use, tell us something about the author's intentions, conscious or otherwise. Mark Schorer, concerning himself only with families of metaphors, terms them substructures.' Reuben Brower, also mainly concerned with recurrent images or metaphors, terms them continuities.2 But although most critics have concentrated primarily on the metaphoric members of these language families, it seems obvious that the literal components, in conjunction with the figurative, form a larger unit that may prove more revealing still. And when we combine the literal and the figurative into a single family unit, we emerge with what is perhaps most accurately called the literary motif. Although there has been much discussion of the function of motifs in specific works, so far as I know there has been nothing approaching a detailed analysis of the device. I should like, therefore, to attempt such an analysis, a description of what the literary is and how it functions. And when I have done that I should like then to examine the question of its literary value. It is a fairly automatic critical assumption that to demonstrate the existence of an elaborate in a given work is to demonstrate something that enhances the value of that work. I agree. But at the same time I think it advisable to inquire into the reasons behind this widespread assent. It is not enough to show that an author has employed a or that one has found its way into his work without at least inquiring why or if its presence is an asset. Perhaps as useful a starting point as any is the entry under motif in one of the standard literary dictionaries: