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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III.?THE COMIC MUSE. There is nothing more essential to a consideration of Mr. Meredith's novels than a right understanding of his idea of comedy. For, many of his creations have been conceived under its direct inspiration and all under its supervision, while the ultimate subtlety of its working is to be traced in the vital influence it has undoubtedly exercised on his style. It is probably as much to that sensitiveness as to any other that we owe the entire absence of commonplace expression in his writing; his keen nerve for what Dr. Holmes has called the polarisation of words detects for him, in the earliest stage of the comic process, what it is common to feel but in the exaggerated cases of prosers talking platitudes with an air, or in the presence of good folk capable of quoting the cup that cheers in all solemnity. To posture in outworn expression is as ludicrous as swaggering in a threadbare coat, and to lead outa tottering phrase with the same sprightly gallantry we would show to one in the bloom of its first season has added a deep touch of the pathetic. If our new thoughts have thrilled dead bosoms, we need not dress them from mouldy wardrobes. It will, therefore, be understood that one who has thus an eye for the comic in the microscopic features of a word, will not when he comes to consider the larger laughableness of men and women, give us simply a hurly-burly comicality after the pattern of those modern humourists who distort life instead of reflecting it, and pass from volume to volume in one long quest of new forms of sacrilege. The great difference between such and the author of The Egoist is that they have to make their ' comedy, ' whereas for the latter it inheres in all things as vitally as poetry and as diffused as sunshine. It needs but the eye to ...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217481199 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217481191 |
| Weight | 0.42 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.29 In |
| List Price | $19.99 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 122 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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