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Why does a literary work employ motifs?—a question that arose in a discussion of Macbeth. That a given commonplace (topos) will show up in a variety of works is no surprise; that is only to say that there is such a thing as a commonplace. My question is about repetition within a single work. And I do not mean repetition in the strict sense, as of a particular musical phrase, or not only that; I am interested in repetition with variation, which may be as indefinite as the appearances of an image that recurs more or less recognizably, in words that are related but not necessarily the same.
Literature 