A posteriori

TEXTUALITY: See écriture.

TEXTURE: In the thought of John Crowe Ransom and the New Critics, "texture" involves poetic details such as the modification of the metrical pattern, associations attached to words, and the aural values of spoken sounds. These elements are separate from the structure of the poem, and they are significantly of interest in a technical sense, but they cannot be captured in a paraphrase or summary of the poem's argument or even in its literal content.

TEXTUS RECEPTUS: The text of the Greek New Testament based on Erasmus' Greek text. In spite of considerable errors and flaws, for four hundred years it was accepted as the standard or commonly received text, hence the name textus receptus. It served as the primary text used in scholarly translations (including the King James translation) and in scholarly debate until historical and textual criticism developed further in the 19th century.

THANATOS (Greek, "death"): Freud's term for a subconscious desire for self-destruction--a secret longing to die--a death wish. See also wish fulfillment.

THEATER IN THE ROUND: A performance taking place on an arena stage. See arena stage.

THEATER OF DIONYSUS: The outdoor theater in Athens where Greek drama began as a part of religious rituals on the sloped side of the Acropolis in Athens.

THEGN: A warrior who has sworn his loyalty to a lord in Anglo-Saxon society. In return for a gift of weaponry and provisions of food and drink at the mead-hall, the thegn vows to fight for his lord and die in his service. He also takes up the task of avenging his lord's death if that lord (hlaford) should die. Compare with Modern English thane. See Anglo-Saxon, hlaford, and heriot.

THEMATIC VOWEL: In linguistics, a vowel attached to the end of an Indo-European root word to form a stem.

THEME: A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work. The theme can take the form of a brief and meaningful insight or a comprehensive vision of life; it may be a single idea such as "progress" (in many Victorian works), "order and duty" (in many early Roman works), "seize-the-day" (in many late Roman works), or "jealousy" (in Shakespeare's Othello). The theme may also be a more complicated doctrine, such as Milton's theme in Paradise Lost, "to justify the ways of God to men," or "Socialism is the only sane reaction to the labor abuses in Chicago meat-packing plants" (Upton Sinclair's The Jungle). A theme is the author's way of communicating and sharing ideas, perceptions, and feelings with readers, and it may be directly stated in the book, or it may only be implied. Compare with motif and leit-motif.

THEOCRASY: Not to be confused with theocracy, theocrasy is the process by which aspects of two or more separate gods in mythology comingle or blend in the form of one deity. For example, the Greek goddess Hera combines features from a pre-Classical cow-spirit (thus her lingering Homeric epithet boopis, or "cow-eyed"), and a high crown worn by various celestial queen figures, and aspects of her as the panton genthla, or mother-goddess. Through the slow process of theocrasy across the centuries, these three originally disparate deities merged into one, to produce the Hera known in Classical Greece. Much later, by Roman times, qualities of the Egyptian goddess Ishtar start to appear in Hera's iconography--another sign of theocrasy.

THEODICY (from Greek theo "God" + dike "right"): In theological writings, this term refers to a defense of God's goodness or justice in the face of evil being allowed to exist or innocent creatures being allowed to suffer--i.e., explanations for why bad things can happen to good people and to what degree a benevolent and omnipotent being can be held accountable for such injustice. An early work exploring this issue is the Hebrew book of Job. Here, the narrator tells the audience four times either that "in all this, Job did not sin" (Job 1:22), or asserts, "he is blameless and upright" (1:8) even as God explicitly allows the Accuser (Hebrew Shaitan or Satan) to ruin Job's health, destroy his possessions, slaughter his family, and kill his servants. In the conclusion, when Job tries to repent for non-existent wrong-doings, the character of God does not rebuke Job, but instead expresses anger at Eliphaz, Bildad, Elihu, and Zophar, who simplistically argue that God only causes suffering to the wicked and that he always protects the good. God's response to Eliphaz is "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has" (Job 42:7). Though the reader witnesses the Shaitan's "bet" or "wager" with God, Job never receives any explanation for his sufferings because Job never witnesses the celestial events the reader is privy to. Since the question remains open-ended, many later theologians have attempted to create some theodicy to reconcile a benevolent deity and the existence of suffering, ranging from Saint Augustine (The Confessions) to C. S. Lewis ("The Problem of Pain"). The character of Doctor Pangloss (Dr. "Explain-it-all") in Voltaire's Candide concerns himself frequently with theodicy--though other characters like Martin often demolish his theories over the course of the satiric tale. The actual term theodicy, however, comes from Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz's Théodicée, a more serious philosophical exploration of the problem than Voltaire's satirical tale.

THEOGONY: In mythology, an account of the gods' origins and their genealogy. Click here for an example chart.

THEOMARCHY: Strife or warfare among the gods, especially in the sense of this activity as a subplot (overplot?) in the Homeric poems such as The Iliad.

THERIANTHROPIC (Grk, therios [beast] + anthros [man]; noun form therianthroposis): This adjective refers to any mixture of human and animal traits together in a single description. This leads to two general uses:

(1) a poetic device akin to personification, but one in which animal traits are given to a human or to an inanimate object. This contrasts with the usual personification, in which human traits are given to an animal or an inanimate object. For example, poet Carl Sandburg uses therianthroposis when he writes of how "the fog comes / on little cat feet," and T.S. Eliot makes a similar analogy between cats and fog in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

(2) In the case of many world mythologies, therianthropic figures are mixtures of animal and human features that result in fantastic composite monsters and composite deities combining human and animal features. Examples include the Egyptian crocodile-headed deity Sobek, or the Hindu elephant-headed deity Ganesha, or angels in the Christian tradition which combine avian wings with human bodies. See theriomorphic, below.

THERIOMORPHIC (Grk, therios [beast] + morphos [shape]; noun form theriomorphosis): Another term for therianthropic, above.

THESIS: (1) In an essay, a thesis is an argument, either overt or implicit, that a writer develops and supports. (2) In classical metrical analysis, Greeks referred to the stressed syllable in a metrical foot as a thesis, and the unstressed syllable in a metrical foot as an arsis. Unfortunately, the Roman analysts used the exact opposite terminology, with the thesis being their unstressed foot and the arsis being the stressed foot. This results in much confusion for modern students.

THIASOS: In ancient Greece, a thiasos was an organized group of women devoted to the worship of Aphrodite. Early scholars have suggested that the poet Sappo may have been a member of a thiasos on the isle of Lesbos (modern day Lesbia).

THING: While the althing was the closest organization the Icelandic Vikings had to America's federal or nationwide government, the thing was the equivalent of the local or regional government (i.e., althings were huge gatherings dealing with matters affecting all of Iceland, while things were smaller, scattered gatherings dealing with matters affecting a town or community). At a thing, representatives from the local area gathered to vote on policy, hear complaints, settle disputes, and designate incorrigible individuals as outlaws.