Leitmotif - Literature and Drama

Literature and Drama

'Leitmotif' is sometimes used by literary or dramatic critics to refer to a recurring event, image, object or character in a story, poem, film or play. Leitmotifs (or motifs) become significant to the meaning of the overall work when they develop thematic importance. In film, such a motif is most frequently a plot device, image, character trait, or element of the mise en scène.

Leitmotif-like techniques, with word patterns replacing melodies, are said to be used in the "Sirens" chapter of Ulysses by James Joyce (chapter 11). Critics argue that there are recurring themes of music that begin at the beginning of the chapter and continue throughout the rest of the chapter, and also the book.

The "leitmotif" is also present in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The themes of the Virgin Mary and the Greek myth of Stephen's namesake, Daedalus, are some of the more noticeable leitmotifs throughout the work. The leitmotif in this novel provides unity as the character of Stephen matures.

Samuel Beckett uses leitmotifs throughout his body of works. Other writers who have used similar techniques include Virginia Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Thomas Mann, Chuck Palahniuk, and Julian Barnes in his 1989 novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters.