What's in a name?

I know that this is ever so slightly off-topic, but it is something I was mulling over as I was munching on breakfast this morning. I'm currently reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman (who is, by the way, an incredible storyteller), and I got to thinking about some of the themes in the book--and by the way, forgive me if I use the wrong terminology as it's been quite awhile since I took an English literature class. And I started mentally exploring the idea that there really are no truly unique themes in books nowadays.

In Stardust, we come across several themes: that of the realm of Faerie (a word which has several spellings), a young man who believes himself in love with a young lady, and a quest for an item. The realm of Faerie--or Fairy, Fairie, Faery, or simply Fae--is a concept that has been around for centuries, even before Shakespeare wrote his Faerie-bespelled characters into A Midsummer Night's Dream. The theme of the young lovers goes back centuries as well, and was incorporated into the myths and legends around the world. Cupid and Psyche from Ancient Rome, Savitri and Satyavan from Hindu legend, and Osiris and Isis from Ancient Egypt are only a few of the stories that blossomed in long-ago times and centered around a love match. Quests are just as old: the Holy Grail, the Golden Fleece, and Gilgamesh's quest for eternal life, just to name a few.

After exploring these themes in Stardust, I wondered how some of the other books I've recently read would perform. The Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey? Yep, it has a strong theme of magic and casters--both of which go back many centuries and existed in many forms in cultures around the world. In Native American culture, the caster was the medicine man. In European fairy tales, they were witches and sorcerers. In the British Isles, they were the Druids. In Egypt they were the priests, given power by their many gods. OK, what about something outside of the fantasy genre? In The Blue Bistro, we see yet again a strong theme of love, but this time with the challenge of love lost and regained--not unlike the Grimm's version of Rapunzel and tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

So what does this mean? This whole exploration put me in mind of my senior thesis I wrote as part of my undergraduate degree. It was a discussion on the idea of cultural memory and how things from our human history don't go away because our culture "remembers" them, and we continue to recognize them on some level as a result. The themes that I've explored here in a way seem to support this idea of cultural memory, but takes it even further. They are reflections of the human experience and while the stories and legends I've mentioned here most likely didn't happen the way the tale goes, they are a part of our cultural memory and part of our cultural roots, and we identify with these themes every time they surface. For us, these themes hold a certain truth and a clue to what it means to be us, to exist, to suffer, to love. Authors will continue to find different ways to explore the same themes over and over, borrowing from our cultural memory of the distant past, and our interest will not disappear.

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P.S. Bonus points to someone that can tell me where the title of this post comes from.