Universal Themes in Literature

Reminding viewers that every culture has storytellers, this somewhat odd and unbalanced introduction to universal themes in world literature offers a reasonably elaborate archetypal conflict tree (individual vs. the self, another individual, family, society, nature, and the cosmos; as well as big topic branches such as "war" and "death"), and then attempts to illustrate these themes with various literary choices. A politically correct though rather unbalanced preponderance of African-American selections appear here (comprising nearly half of the quoted works, ranging from Sharon Bell Mathis' The Hundred Penny Box and Ralph Ellison's modern classic, Invisible Man [incorrectly referred to as The Invisible Man in the video and accompanying study guide] to a citation-less passage from Alice Walker), as well as a number of truncated quotes from other works. Viewers are told, for instance, that Hamlet features the "most often-quoted lines in all of literature" but then only given the first six words ("to be or not to be..."); or asked to reflect on the character of Odysseus (but then told nothing of his plight, other than that he battled monsters at sea). A good contemporary guide to universal themes in literature would be welcome indeed, but this lopsided, incomplete and occasionally inaccurate guide does a less than salutary job of illustrating its otherwise solid main points. Not a necessary purchase. Aud: J, H. (R. Pitman)