“Linear: Stylistic term used to describe a work of art in which contour, rather than masses of colors and tones, is the primary means of compositional definition. Compare painterly.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“On television I see Mary McCarthy taking about her Vassar friend, the poet Elizabeth Bishop. I notice Mary’s instant icy smile, so often present when I interviewed her in Paris in 1966 for a book. George Grosz saw the same smile on Lenin’s face. ‘It doesn’t mean a smile,’ he said. I am fascinated by it. It represents, I think, an unsuccessful attempt to soften a harsh, bluntly stated judgement. Last summer, twenty-two years after the book I wrote about her, which she so disliked, appeared, I encountered Mary for the first time in an outdoor market in Blue Hill.
‘Hello Mary,’ I said. ‘Do you remember me?’
Her smile flashed and then, like a worn-out bulb, disappeared instantly.
‘Unfortunately,’ she said.
It didn’t mean a smile.”
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
“The Thin Man: A comedy-mystery film (1934), starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as the ever-bantering and happily tippling husband-and-wife team Nick and Nora Charles, who, with the aid of their wire-haired terrier Asta, investigate the disappearance of the tall, eccentric inventor Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis), who is the ‘Thin Man’ of the title. The screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich based their sparkling script on the novel The Thin Man (1932) by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), who is said to have based the wisecracking and mutual teasing of Nick and Nora on his own relationship with the playwright Lillian Hellman (1905-84). There were several more Thin Man films, generally less successful than the first.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Rhetorical Figure: An artful arrangement of words to achieve a particular emphasis and effect, as in apostrophe, chiasmus, and zeugma. A rhetorical figure does not alter the meanings of words as a metaphor may do. The repetitions in these lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “St Winefred’s Well” are rhetorical in their emphasis and echoing:
‘T. What is it, Gwen, my girl? Why do you hove and haund me?
W. You came by Caerwys, sir?
V. I came by Caerwys
W. There
Some messenger there might have met/met you from my uncle.
T. Your uncle met the messenger-/met me; and this is the message:
Lord Bueno comes to night./
W. To night, sir!'”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
“Tropic of Cancer: A semi-autobiographical novel (1934) in experimental form by the US writer Henry Miller (1891-1980). Unashamedly exhibitionistic, the book reflects Miller’s bohemian life and sexual activities during the 1920s and 1930s. Tropic of Capricorn (1939) is a companion volume, recalling his childhood and earlier life in the United States. Both books were banned in the United States until the 1960s. Of Tropic of Cancer, the poet and critic Ezra Pound (1885-1972) commented: ‘At last an unprintable book which is readable.’ The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are two parallel lines either side of the Equator between which the sun can be directly overhead at noon. Miller commented that
‘Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line… You live like a rock in the midst of the ocean; you are fixed while everything about you is in turbulent motion.’
A film version (1970) was directed by Joseph Strick.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Review: A short notice of discussion or critical article in a paper, journal or periodical; (b) a journal or periodical containing articles on literature, art and philosophy. The Edinburgh Review is a famous example; so is the Quarterly Review. Publications like Horizon, Scrutiny, The London Magazine, Essays in Criticism, and Encounter might well be placed in this category.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Dizzy Gillespie: (originally John Birks) (1917-1993) U.S. jazz trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleaders, one of the primary innovators of bebop. Born in Cheraw, South Carolina, Gillespie was influenced by Roy Eldridge and played with the big bands of Cab Calloway, Earl Hines, and Billy Eckstine before leading small groups in the mid-1940s. He pioneered bebop with saxophonist Charlie Parker and pianist Thelonious Monk. Bringing this approach to his big band in the late 1940s, Gillespie popularized the use of Afro-Cuban rhythms in jazz. Alternating between large and small ensembles for the rest of his career, his virtuosity and comic wit (in addition to his puffed cheeks and trademark 45° upturned trumpet bell) made him one of the most charismatic and influential musicians in jazz.
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“spectrum: Arrangement according to wavelength (or frequency) of electromagnetic radiation. The visible, ‘rainbow’ spectrum is a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible as light to the human eye. Some sources emit only certain wavelengths and produce and emission spectrum of bright lines with dark spaces between. Such line spectra are characteristic of the elements that emit the radiation. A band spectrum consists of groups of wavelengths so close together that the lines appear to form a continuous band. Atoms and molecules absorb certain wavelengths and so remove them from a complete spectrum; the resulting absorption spectrum contains dark lines or bands at these wavelengths.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Zealot: Someone who has the answer to a problem. Originally a religious fanatic given to violence, the zealot is a likely today to be a corporatist expert. They are, as Samuel Johnson defined them, ‘passionately ardent in any cause. They are the bearers of truth.’”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
“Paragraph: (Greek “side writing): Originally a short, horizontal stroke drawn below the beginning of a line in which there was a break in the sense. Now, for all practical purposes, a passage, or section, of subdivision in a piece of writing, Usually a paragraph deals with one particular point of aspect of the subject presented. It may vary greatly in length.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
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