Leitmotiv, Leitmotif

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.05: French Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth-Century , 1800-1900.
Vol. editors: Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Nigel Harkness (University of Newcastle upon Tyne), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield), Jennifer Yee (University of Oxford)

Domains

Poetic/ rhetorical term

Dates

Date of occurrence 1850

Places

France (Location)
Germany (Location)
Norway (Location)
Russia (Location)
United Kingdom (Location)
America (Involved; Involved)

The German term Leitmotiv (leading or guiding motif) has long been used for musical and textual analysis and has found its way into the English, French and other languages as leitmotif or leitmotiv. More recently the term has also been introduced to film studies, inspired by the work of directors Luchino Visconti, Ingmar Bergman and many others. Perhaps for the first time in print the German musicologist Friedrich Wilhelm Jähns (1871) applied it to the repetition and modification of certain themes in the music of Carl Maria von Weber. Leitmotiv was established as a musicological term by Hans Paul von Wolzogen in his writings on Richard Wagner’s operas (1887ff.) to designate recurring themes, melodies or …

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2241 words

Citation: Knapp, Gerhard P.. "Leitmotiv, Leitmotif". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 January 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1355, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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Leitmotiv, Leitmotif

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