- Intentional failure: failure as a deliberate philosophical, rhetorical, or artistic strategy.
- Consciousness of potential failure in antiquity: the anxiety of ancient authors and artists about living up to their predecessors.
- Literary treatments of failure: thwarted love, flawed characters, fruitless wanderings.
- Failures of language and perception.
- Failures of genre: texts or objects considered flawed or “less than” examples of a genre.
- Modern and ancient reinterpretations of canonical texts or material objects as failing in some way.
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Misapplications or appropriations of antiquity throughout history.