Theme Ontology

The themes are arranged in a hierarchy: a tree-like graph, a directed acyclic graph, a taxonomy, but with extra features that make it an ontology. Each theme definition establishes the necessary and sufficient conditions for when that theme is present in a story.

Every story–theme association is weighted as minor, major, or choice, and comes with an explanation, the motivation, describing how the theme manifests in that story. Each theme definition averages 21 words, every annotated story carries about 13 themes, and a typical motivation runs 17 words, with the longest 10% reaching 30 words or more. For a taste, explore the most-used theme husband and wife, the most-themed story Plato's Stepchildren, or the collection Alfred Hitchcock.

The underlying data is open and maintained on GitHub. A Python package totolo or an R package stoRy can download and analyse it.