It comprised the third volume of Fielding's scattered writings known as Miscellanies, largely devoted to the themes of grandiose ambition and false greatness.
Mr. Lay, 59, is now deposed and discredited, and Enron's collapse into bankruptcy, with its Shakespearean themes of greed, ambition and arrogance, has become a corporate scandal rippling into the highest reaches of Washington politics.
The show's rootedness in the swerves and bumps of an individual biography struck me as admirable but also limiting, and its themes of creative ambition, racial identity and the search for that elusive thing called the real seemed to lie too heavily on the surface.
With its pioneering use of themes of scientific ambition and discovery, A Trip to the Moon is widely considered to be the first science fiction film; A Short History of Film argues that it codified "many of the basic generic situations that are still used in science fiction films today".
The possibility of sex is mixed with an austere saying: "Expect much of yourself and little of others," "You cannot love life until you live the life you love," and "Financial hardship in your life is coming to an end!" Every message alludes to themes of hidden ambition, materialistic influences, personal aims at inner peace, and the disconnect between physical and mental states.
The chestnut of choice this year is Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life, which, despite its icing sugar of schmaltz, could strike a chord with its themes of relinquished ambitions and financial hardship.
But Tory sources said that, between the covers, the manifesto will paint a dramatic picture of the central theme of Cameron's leadership – his ambition to preside over a "Big Society" in which power is handed down to users of public services and voters at a local and national level.
Other film-makers - Truffaut, Tarkovsky, Kieslowski - dealt with great themes, but none with the same consistency of ambition as Bergman.
His tone, however, shifted once theme of China and its regional ambitions came up.
The setting is updated to the 19th century, which makes the story's themes of raw political ambition, jealousy and racism seem uncomfortably immediate.
