Style
No critic has ever claimed that Brome was a great dramatic poet or a truly distinctive literary stylist; his verse and prose are generally nothing more than functional, and certainly lack the vivid eloquence of Shakespeare and the intellectual knottiness of his idol Jonson. In The Antipodes, however, the richness of Brome's material appears to inspire him to an imaginative quality that he rarely achieves elsewhere — as in this passage from Act I scene vi, on Sir John Mandeville and the talking trees of the Antipodes:
-
-
-
-
-
-
- But he had reach'd
-
-
-
-
- To this place here — yes here — this wilderness,
- And seen the trees of the Sun and Moon, that speak,
- And told King Alexander of his death; he then
- Had left a passage ope for travellers,
- That now is kept and guarded by wild beasts,
- Dragons, and serpents, elephants white and blue
- Unicorns, and lions of many colours,
- And monsters more as numberless as nameless.
-
Read more about this topic: The Antipodes
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it’s a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself—or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind.... You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)