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:
“The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)