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:
“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)
“A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can’t get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.”
—Anzia Yezierska (c. 1881–1970)
“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)