If we use the definition typically applied to the visual arts: These books by Jeff Vandermeer have a subject that encompasses scientists researching a strange phenomenon along the southeast coast of the USA. They encounter many strange things, both inside and outside of the phenomenon known as Area X. The content (which sadly did not make it into the film version) is a series of explorations on the idea of communication. What words mean, what they do, and what you do when you try to communicate with something that has zero grounding in your understanding of communication. It delves into the space where thoughts are born, and tries to reach into the primordial mass that creates those thoughts to see what material is there. The fact that this never makes it into the thematically bankrupt film version is an easy way to see the difference between the two concepts because in the film, one is missing.
The subject is what it's about. The content is what is actually there on the page written about the subject.
Moby Dick's subject is a man following an obsession so far that it's self-detrimental. It's contents are "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - ..."
Just to throw the thread a twist, and to clarify for my own sake: is there a meaningful distinction between subject and theme given the above explanations?
Very different. For example, a major theme of Moby Dick would be that personal obsession can lead you and anyone who follows you to doom.
I think that's why I am reaching out for some clarification on this. newjerseyrunner suggested that this is an example of 'subject': Which sounds pretty close to xoic's 'theme': Vs your suggestion that the subject is 'a whale hunt', which feels more like the content (?) I'm honestly pretty confused at the moment.
Well, I have to say that I disagree. The subject of Moby Dick is the flat, litteral story. The story that anyone can grok because it's simply the things that happen and the people making them happen or to whom they are happening. A whale hunt. The content is a level deeper than that. The content is about obsession and also about the relationship of Man with God. The whale is typically viewed as a symbolic representation of the Almighty in this story. Obsession. http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-subject-matter-and-content/
Right, so this feels like the opposite of some above descriptions, but this may be because your citation is a description of academic educational material rather than in a literary work such as long form fiction (using the example of Moby Dick). What I was trying to wrap my head around was where theme fits in, and whether it's just a way to describe the thesis in, say, a more compact form such as a single word as you've used in your example above for content. Just to break out my specific interpretation so as to be clear Moby Dick: * Theme: Obsession * Thesis: Obsession can destroy everything you value * Subject: seeking revenge for a past wrong * Content: a whale hunt I'm not saying this is definitively correct, just that this is my grokking of the terminology as an amateur who wrestled with it over the years and thought it had some bearing on writing so dug into it for awhile.
Just as an exercise, I'll try to apply this to HPATPS: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: * Theme: Change * Thesis: Change is opportunity * Subject: struggling to learn and accept a new place in the world * Content: boy discovers he is a wizard after years of being kept in the dark
You've got Subject and Content examples reversed in both these examples. Moby Dick - The subject is a whale hunt; the content is about obsession and revenge HPATPS - The subject is a boy who discovers he's a powerful wizard; the content is about struggling to engage and accept a new place in the world.
This is why I appreciate a dialog on this... subject is notably absent in pretty much every literary glossary and guide I have on my bookshelf. Likewise content, except in the context of Content Vs Form, which doesn't really interact with 'subject' in any of the examples. These words make much more sense in my graphic arts texts, where Form Vs Content is pretty clear, as is Subject. These definitions don't seem to transfer to literature in any meaningful way, unfortunately. In contrast, there's consistent reference to Theme, Thesis, and I'm pretty comfortable with applying them. What I'm trying to wrap my head around is subject and content, and there's the distinct possibility that i've been chasing my tail and that there's just not a consistent use of these concepts for me to worry about.
I think "content" should just be stricken from the literary lexicon. I mean, all things have content in the sense that all things have atoms (except photons and other EMS stuff, of course). Maybe there is a literay specific definition that is eluding me. Wouldn't be the first time.
This is where I'm landing, re literary use. In the graphic arts, in music, the definition is very clear. In the literary context not so much.
Yeah, I can't say I've ever seen literary definitions for any of these terms, so I'm groping in the dark here, but just to offer yet a different possibility: in one sense I could see the subject of Moby Dick being Captain Ahab—in the sense of the subject of a sentence for example. And the object (of his desire) would be the white whale. Ishmael is the POV character, the narrator, but the MC is really Ahab (in the same way the narrator of The Great Gatsby was the POV character but his neighbor Gatsby was the MC and Main Subject of that book). But as I say, I borrowed this from sentence construction, so I don't know if it carries the same kind of meaning in a story, or if we should be thinking more along the lines of 'subject matter', which then I would have a hard time defining from contents. In the end I'm not sure this is much more meaningful than discussions on how many angels can dance on the point of a pin though.
I'm leaning toward that too, it's what logicians call a category error. How many triangles in Wednesday. Which is more left handed, four or three? Is blue inside?
Only that's not what's in play. Subject (matter) and content are pretty clearly different to me in the application to literature, but I think we don't often get to actually engage this level of conversation. Stories can be engaged in different ways. They have more than one port of entry. This came up in the thread Jan started about what we like to see writers do. That was my answer, that the writer pay attention to the multiplicity of ports. Alice Walker's The Color Purple is either a story about Miss Celie and all the inhabitants of the small town (subject), or it's a story where all the women in the narrative are actually facets of Miss Celie. They are all her in her different modes and ways of being. (content) China Miéville's Embassytown is about humans exploring the universe and coming into contact with very strange creatures (subject), or it's a treatise on language function, language acquisition, and how language is directly tied into the formation of Theory of Mind. The MC is a woman who is a simile trying to become a metaphor. (content) China Miéville's The City and the City is a solid police procedural and noire detective story rotating around a murder investigation (subject), or it's a deep exploration into how culture affects what we see around us and what we learn to filter out and unsee (content). The Southern Reach novels by Jeff VanderMeer. These are about scientists exploring a strange anomaly taking place somewhere along the Southeast coast of the United States (subject), or it's a story about communication at its most fundamental level, down past words and syntax, phonemes, and memes (not the internet kind, the idea kind) and into that amorphous proto-phase of concept and whatever it is that serves as the material through which an idea is born that then wraps itself in words to travel across rude physical space and attempt to enter another mind (content). ------------------------------ More than anything, I think the issue lies with our investment in the more pedestrian meanings of those two words, subject and content, not unlike the way Show vs Tell never fails to stumble drunkenly off into bizarre territory because too many want Show to mean litteral optics and Tell to mean words that are spoken, but inside the conversation of Show vs Tell, these words acquire other meanings that are more figurative.
Here's what Google tells me about subject and content in visual arts: "Subject matter is the literal, visible image in a work while content includes the connotative, symbolic, and suggestive aspects of the image. The subject matter is the subject of the artwork, e.g., still life, portrait, landscape etc. Gerald Brommer in Emotional content: How to create paintings that communicate notes that "Content is the reason for making a painting." He further elaborates: "Content is not subject or things in the painting. Content is the communication of ideas, feelings and reactions connected with the subject...... When we look at a painting its content is what is sensed rather than what can be analyzed. It is the ultimate reason for creating art." Something in the painting must appeal or speak to the heart, spirit and soul of the viewer. He specifically calls this "emotional content"." So yeah, Wreybies is right. I retract my silly notion.
Never mind how the hell he and his printers managed to format dialogue as visual fractions... I'm fairly certain Mieville is either an alien construct or a conduit for some otherworldly intelligence.
So does this mean that theme is a part of the content, or in some cases maybe the entirety of the content? I would assume so.
For anyone unfamiliar with Embassytown and the phenomenon Homer mentions, have a look at the image above. The Ariekei (aka the Hosts) of Embassytown are beings with two different speaking organs. They use them both at the same time, producing different sounds with each. The only way an Ariekei is even able to acknowledge that a human is communicating with it is when the human is part of a twin set trained to be an Ambassador (the two people are made reference in the singular, as one thing, which I find delightful given that China is a Brit.) Yes, theme goes in the context basket. A story can have more than one theme, though, so yes to the other half too, the basket may contain one or more themes.