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Characterization   /kˌɛrəktərɪzˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Characterization

noun
1.
A graphic or vivid verbal description.  Synonyms: characterisation, delineation, depiction, picture, word-painting, word picture.  "The author gives a depressing picture of life in Poland" , "The pamphlet contained brief characterizations of famous Vermonters"
2.
The act of describing distinctive characteristics or essential features.  Synonym: characterisation.
3.
Acting the part of a character on stage; dramatically representing the character by speech and action and gesture.  Synonyms: enactment, personation, portrayal.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Characterization" Quotes from Famous Books



... characterization applies to the Alaskan Eskimo only; so far as is now known the other Eskimo branches ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... actor calls The Revenge; or, A Match in Newgate, has sometimes been erroneously ascribed to Mrs. Behn by careless writers. She has also been given The Woman Turn'd Bully, a capital comedy with some clever characterization, which was produced at Dorset Garden in June, 1675, and printed without author's name the same year. Both Prologue and Epilogue, two pretty songs, Oh, the little Delights that a Lover takes; and Ah, how ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... This gift of characterization in a few words is lavished also on material objects, as, for instance; what more is needed to describe the forlornness of the home from which Anne was rescued than the statement that even the trees ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Lounsbury ante.] This is merely a regular part of the form of a grant. Any enrollments of grants—such as those noted on the preceding page—will give examples of the use of this phrase. Further, the form of grant practically always includes a characterization of the grantee as "dilectus vallettus," "dilectus ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert

... old girl," (according to Sam's disrespectful characterization of Miss Prue) she had quite given ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... Where are Oberon and Puck? Without a name? Where Titania?—Mab? Without a motive? Where the godmother of the sweet-faced and sweet-hearted Cinderella? Partial, and without a distinct type in your own recollections, you guessingly pronounce the characterization of the perpetual secretary too——French. Driven back, disappointed on all sides, you turn round upon your difficulties, and manfully project beating out a definition of your own; to which end, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... adds to the simple delivery of speeches all those other traits by which persons in real life are different from one another. Such complete identification of your personality with that of the person you are trying to represent in a play is termed character delineation, or characterization. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... masterpiece, David and Bethsabe, was also, in many respects, a fine play, though its beauties were poetic rather than dramatic, consisting not in the characterization—which is feeble—but in the eastern luxuriance of the imagery. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... characterization, and that endlessly diversified. But when he sketched each several character it seems that he was never content till he had either found or fabricated the aptest words possible for representing its form and pressure most true to life. No two characters being identical in any particular ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... sing his solo in the lightest of light tenors, would still, on lapsing into dialogue, reinstate himself apologetically by using as rough and gruff a voice as he could summon. Not so Lemoyne: he was doing a consistent piece of "characterization," and he ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... intended attack upon the arsenal by the secessionists then encamped near the city under the guise of State militia. In reply, the general denounced in his usual vigorous language the proposed attempt upon the arsenal; and, as if to clinch his characterization of such a "—— outrage," said: "Why, the State has not yet passed an ordinance of secession; she has not gone out of the Union." That did not indicate to me that General Harney's Union principles were quite up to the standard required by the situation, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... his father. Concerning the composition of "Die Entfuhrung," Mozart delivered himself at greater length and more explicitly than about any other opera. From the above excerpt one can learn his notions touching musical characterization and delineation. ["Turkish" music, or "Janizary" music, is that in which the percussion effects of Oriental music are imitated—music utilizing the large drum, ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, "The way in which one utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak louder of a man's true nature than his diary." How well these words apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods of disposing ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... able to say now how much of all this is observation of previous facts, and how much speculation based upon subsequent occurrences. At the best I can only let it stand for characterization. In the same interest I will add a fact in relation to Mrs. Alderling which ought to have its weight against any undue appeal I have been making in her behalf. Without in the least blaming her, I will say that I think that Mrs. Alderling ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... stuff," he began at once (we had just been introduced), "is that it lacks plot. Been meaning to meet and tell you that for a long time. Your characterization's all right, and your dialogue. In fact, I think they're good. But your stuff lacks raison d'etre—if you ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... cynical mirth," he said, "but I must say he doesn't look it. I was prepared for any characterization but that. He looks like a powerful son of the Renaissance, who might have lived in that one little vacation of the soul after medievalism stopped hag-riding us, and before the modern conscience got its claws on us. And you say he was ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... dramatic power was, it has already been remarked, Poliziano's aim and achievement. The want of characterization in the hero, the insignificance of the part allotted to Euridice, the total inadequacy of the tragic climax, measure the author's power as a dramatist. It is the lyrical passages—Aristeo's song, Orfeo's impassioned pleading, the bacchanalian ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... the assiduous idolaters of stratified dogma he entertained a contempt which he was seldom at pains to conceal. North Carolina had many clergymen of the more progressive type; these men chuckled at Page's vigorous characterization of the brethren, but those against whom it had been aimed raged with a fervour that was almost unchristian. This clerical excitement, however, did not greatly disturb the philosophic Page. The hubbub lasted for several years—for Page's Greensboro speech was only the first of many pronouncements ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... secluded, appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest. Here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel and held till it crystallizes into a nation. These are the conspicuous areas of race characterization. The development of the various ethnic and political offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areas of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process of national differentiation which goes on in such ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... Michael Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's characterization of Byron in ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... To this characterization of Andrew Jackson by his greatest American contemporary it is impossible to make noteworthy addition. His was a character of striking contradictions. His personal virtues were honesty, bravery, open-heartedness, chivalry toward women, hospitality, steadfastness. His ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... still one more fragment of self characterization: "A chief trait in my character was the need for love, not that everyday love which limits itself to a personal pleasure and delight, but that unbounded, overflowing love which feels itself completely one with the beloved.... The ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... one-sided conception of infinity, we must look for another characterization of the relationship between a point and a plane which are infinitely distant from one another. This requires, first of all, a proper characterization of ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... melody and rhythm depends, however, upon their interrelation, the concrete musical structure, the motive or melody in the complete sense, being an indissoluble unity of both. Now if we take the term will with a broad meaning, Schopenhauer's characterization of melody as an image of the will still remains the truest aesthetic interpretation of it. For, when we hear it, we not only hear, but attend to what we hear; we hear each tone in its relations of harmony or contrast or fulfillment to other tones, freighted ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... Mr. Peaslee's characterization. To tell the truth, he mistrusted the man's ability, and was afraid of him. If that fellow knew, Mr. Peaslee felt that it would go hard with ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson

... Metropolitan Opera House Parlous State of Italian Opera in London and on the Continent Dr. Leopold Damrosch and His Enterprise The German Singers Amalia Materna Marianne Brandt Marie Schroeder-Hanfstngl Anton Schott, the Military Tenor Von Blow's Characterization: "A ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... to-day dislike the Yankee dialect of these verses. Some think Lowell struck too hard; but they forget Grant's characterization of the Mexican War as "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation." There are critics who think the First Series of "Biglow Papers" too sectional; an exhibition of New England's ancient tendency ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... strikes us is that they are unreasonably disproportioned and that many of them have shortcomings and so to speak an embarrassment of characterization that nothing can justify. The captain is too big and the lieutenant too small, not only by the side of Captain Kock, whose stature crushes him, but also beside accessory figures whose height or breadth gives this somewhat ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... of Civilization," but even a large collection of the writings of George Sand and Balzac—these latter in the original tongue; for who, indeed, would ever venture to publish an English translation? As for the reading-room, was it not characterization enough to state that two Sunday newspapers, reeking fresh from Fleet Street, regularly appeared on the tables? What possibility of perusing the Standard or the Spectator in such an atmosphere? It was clear that the supporters of law and decency must bestir themselves ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... his client knew himself; he conceived him as an actor conceives character, and, in a great measure, saw with his eyes from his point of view, and, in the argument of his case, gave clear expression and consistent characterization to his nature and to his partisan views in their relations to the history of the case. We have seen his clients sit listening to the story of their own lives and conduct, held off in artistic relief and in dramatic relation, with tears running down cheeks which had not been moistened by ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... Ingersoll began to read his eloquent characterization of the dead, his eyes filled with tears. He tried to hide them behind his eye-glasses, but he could not do it, and finally he bowed his head upon the dead man's coffin in uncontrollable grief. It was after some delay and the greatest efforts of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... he exelent in the qualitie[1] he professes: Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that aprooves his Art." This characterization so well fits in with the tone of later contemporary allusions to Shakespeare that it is regrettable that Chettle did not make its reference to him ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... came when his dying father laid down the reins of government and told the officer of the day to take his orders from the new commander-in-chief of Prussia. How the Prince was judged by his political contemporaries we see from the characterization which an Austrian agent had given of him a short time before: "He is graceful, wears his own hair, and has a somewhat careless bearing; likes the fine arts and good cooking. He would like to begin his rule by something striking. He is a firmer friend of the army than his ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... felt that the part of the ingenuous young girl in this play was ideally suited to her pleading personality, so, in conjunction with Mrs. Thomas Whiffen and Charles Cherry, he featured her in the cast. Miss Murdock's characterization amply justified Frohman's confidence, but the play failed in New York and on the road. He wrote ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... Consequently he was popular, and if not overburdened with brains, managed to make himself agreeable to the world, and to have what the Americans call "a good time." He had travelled much and was fond of big-game shooting. To complete his characterization, it is necessary to mention that he had served in the Boer War, and had gained a D.S.O. But that was in the days before he met Juliet or he might not have risked a life ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... Davenport, taking back the sheet. "You merely describe the handwriting itself. Your characterization, as far as it goes, would fit men who write very differently from this. It fits me, for instance, and yet look at my angular scrawl." He held up a specimen of his own irregular hand, beside the elegant penmanship of the note, and ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Muirhead, not because his antithetic characterization of American life is very illuminating, but because of the precise terms of his charges against America. His indictment is practically equivalent to the assertion that the American system is not, or at least is no longer, achieving as much as has been claimed ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... undoubtedly reveal the advancing years of their author, in a good and in a bad sense. They lack the theatrical self-evidence of the earlier dramas. But on the other hand, they are rich in the ripest wisdom of their creator, and in significance of characterization as well as in profundity of idea they amply atone for absence of the more superficial qualities. Kaiser Rudolf II. in Brothers' Quarrels is one of the most human of the men who in the face of inevitable calamity have pursued a Fabian policy. Even to personal predilections, like fondness for the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... upon the platform beside him. Here the resemblance to reality ceased, for the heroine was dark and Aristide blonde and beardless, and yet this very discrimination on Olga's part seemed to point more definitely to Hermia even than if the characterization had been truthfully followed. The actors were professionals who had been well drilled in their parts and the plot developed quickly in the dialogue between Madeleine, the erring wife, and Aristide, the recreant husband, who had fled from fashionable Paris, met upon the road ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... that the showman himself must be able to create from his available material, which he will find and develop in dialogue, lyrics, tuneful music, voice, singing, dancing, characterization, costumes, settings, scenery, properties, lighting, and everything else connected in any way with the stage picture or the presentation of his offering. The publicity and exploitation of the show will tax his showmanship from another ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... de Gu['e]rin to her brother resembles that of Madame de S['e]vign['e] for her daughter, the peerless Pauline. It was George Sand who discovered the genius of that brother, though her characterization of the qualities of his genius did not please the Christian soul of his sister. It was left to Sainte-Beuve to fix De Gu['e]rin's place in French literature; and I recall now that the reading of Sainte-Beuve led me to find the poems of David ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... The characterization of musical keys is very strange. In different ages an entirely different capacity of expression, often an exactly opposite color, has been attributed to each separate key. In the eighteenth century G-major ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... published, gives evidence of imagination and taste. Lanier was wise enough to accept most of his criticism: the revised form of the poem compared with the first form shows a great many changes, and is striking evidence of Lanier's power to improve his work. Judge Bleckley's characterization of "Corn" so accurately describes it that his words may be quoted here: "It presents four pictures; three of them landscapes and one a portrait. You paint the woods, a cornfield, and a worn-out hill. These are your landscapes. And your portrait is the likeness of an anxious, unthrifty cotton-planter, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... his enthusiasm exalts the Epid. to an ideal of comic excellence (Introd. Ps. p. 27). He even goes so far as to contend that Plautus lives up to the following characterization:[25] "Nicht blos durch naturgetreue and lebhafte Charakterschilderungen und durch eine komisch gehaltene, aber die Grenzen des Wahrscheinlichen und des Grazioesen nicht ueberschreitende Zeichnung des taeglichen Lebens soll der Dichter des Lustspiels seine Zuschauer interessiren ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... in the June number of this Magazine, we spoke of his general comprehensiveness and creativeness, of his method of characterization, and of the identity of his genius with his individuality. In the present article we purpose to treat of some particular topics included in the general theme; and as criticism on him is like coasting along a continent, we shall make little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... the finest poetry is contained in picturesque passages such as these, we find verse of another order, thrilling as the trumpet's "golden cry," in the passionate invocation of Dante, enshrining the magnificently Dantesque characterization of the three divisions ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... have got a fairly true characterization of Sophy Decker from one of fifty people: from a salesman in a New York or Chicago wholesale millinery house; from Otis Cowan, cashier of the First National Bank of Chippewa; from Julia Gold, her head milliner and trimmer; from almost anyone, in fact, except a member of her own family. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... he laughed loudly. "I s'pose he's some old widower!" he said, the object thus described seeming ignominious enough to a person of eighteen, without additional characterization. "Some ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... named Lamb." Then he suddenly remembered Mr. Swallow's characterization, and added, "not a ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... her work of destruction. As she drew near the stranded Minnesota, a strange little craft moved out from the side of the big frigate and headed straight for the iron-clad. It was Ericsson's Monitor, which had arrived from New York at midnight. The Confederate characterization of it as a "cheese-box on a raft" is still the best description of its appearance. Its lower hull, 122 feet long and 34 wide, was protected by a raft-like overhanging upper hull, 172 feet long and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... approach to a sentimental characterization of precious stones is to be found in "A Lover's Complaint", lines 204-217. Although we have already noted most of them separately, it may be well to give ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... of Saul, the arch persecutor, is shown in the characterization of him by Luke, when he represented him as breathing out, "threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... the same peculiarity, or rather want of peculiarity, attached itself to her countenance, which I before mentioned in the case of the president—that is to say, only one feature of her face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed the acute Tarpaulin immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party; every one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular portion of physiognomy. With the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... also, and the structural subtilties of a more developed literary period, we must not, of course, look in 'Beowulf.' The narrative is often more dramatic than clear, and there is no thought of any minuteness of characterization. A few typical characters stand out clearly, and they were all that the poet's turbulent and not very attentive audience could understand. But the barbaric vividness and power of the poem give it much more than a merely historical interest; ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... the foot-lights, artists and their models, literary men of Bohemian tendencies, these are the people whom Billy Burgundy has selected for characterization. True, they speak their lines in slang, but it is the slang of the educated, and is always artistic ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... hold of the idea of limited partnership and had sought to apply it, in roundabout fashion, to the matrimonial relation. His treatment, far from suggesting an academic aloofness, was as concrete as characterization and conversation could make it; no one would have supposed, at first glance, that what chiefly moved him was a chaste abstract Platonic regard for the whole gentler sex. In short, people—such seemed to be his thesis—might very advantageously separate, and most informally too, as soon ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... large scale; he provided the British public with coffee for its breakfast, with drugs for its stomach, and with strange woods for its dining-room furniture and walking-sticks. He combated this ignominious characterization of his position indignantly. The new arrivals certainly gave him no hint that they considered him so lightly. This thought greatly comforted him, for he felt that in some way he was summoning to his aid all of his assets and resources to meet an expert and final valuation. As he ranged them before ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... wife's cheque-book. How it ends you must find out. If you object that there is very little in all this to suggest the spirit of fine romance which you have learnt to associate with the names of AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE, I can only say that (while my rough synopsis does no justice to some pleasant characterization) I myself greatly prefer these two writers in their earlier and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various

... factors have been exhausted. Nevertheless as between the different races or great varieties of mankind there must be a great difference in racial heredity. It could not, indeed, be otherwise, since these different races were developed in different geographical environments or "areas of characterization." Natural selection has developed in each race of mankind an innate character fitted to cope with the environment in which it was evolved. This is clearly perceptible in regard to their bodily traits, and all modern research seems to show that their native reactions ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... under the Court House," was the general characterization of the House of Detention. "Jail was a Paradise compared to this depraved place," said Miss Morey. "We slept in our clothes, four women to a cell, on iron shelves two feet wide. In the cell was an open toilet. The place slowly filled up during the night ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... emancipate his slaves." "If a place could be provided for their reception," said Randolph, "and a mode of sending them hence, there were [sic] hundreds, nay thousands of citizens" who would manumit their slaves.[279] Randolph's characterization of the free black was generally approved by the leaders in this movement. Caldwell used "degraded" and "ignorant" in describing this class of people. Mills said: "It will transfer to the coast of Africa the blessings of religion and civilization; and Ethiopia will ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... This characterization of child-speech offers not a few points of contact with primitive languages, and might indeed almost have been written of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... separately: (1) his power of visualization; (2) his choice of significant detail; (3) his originality or lack of it; (4) his range in characterization; (5) his power of suggestion as over against his vividness of delineation; (6) his economy—or lack of it—in expression. Where does his main ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert

... immensity of the conception—the power of characterization!" he cried. "Just see how quietly ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam

... and in the mouths of every civilized people. Groups of national proverbs exist in most of the languages of the world, each family of apothegms revealing the chief traits of the people who gave them birth. In these collective expressions of national mind, we can recognize—if so incomplete a characterization may be ventured—the indrawn meditativeness of the Hindu, the fiery imagination of the Arab, the devout and prudential understanding of the Hebrew, the aesthetic subtilty of the Greek, the legal breadth and sensual recklessness of the Roman, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... Might), met with equal success, securing for its author a large circle of readers on both sides of the Atlantic ready to welcome the future productions of her pen. The qualities which distinguish her writings are vigor of conception, sharpness of characterization, a moral earnestness pervading the judgments and reflections, and an ardor, sometimes too exuberant, which gives intensity to the delineation even while exciting doubts of its fidelity. Similar qualities had characterized her acting, and they spring from a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... been unusually struck by a story sent in to him by an unknown writer. It was, he told me, amazing from every purely literary point of view—plot, characterization, colour, and economy of language. It had so much that it seemed strange that anything at all should be lacking. He sent for the writer, and told him just what ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... Frivolity, of which there was little in this sober boy, was in her eyes a vice; loud laughter almost a crime; cards, and novelles, as she called them, were such in her estimation, as to be beyond my powers of characterization. Her commonest injunction was, 'Noo be douce,'—that is sober—uttered to the soberest boy she could ever have known. But Robert was a large-hearted boy, else this life would never have had to be written; and so, through all this, his deepest nature ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... and down the land for many years. Now and again, when the part did not need any special characterization, he obtained London engagements. He was one ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... on them in enormous vats. Others are seen gathering and delivering more grapes. As in the other picture, showing the harvest of fruit, more people are shown. Brangwyn never hesitates to use great numbers of people, which seem to give him no trouble whatever in their modeling and characterization. ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... centuries. In describing, in succeeding chapters, the principal aspects of this governmental system it will be necessary frequently to allude to these more recent constitutional developments, and it would but involve repetition to undertake an account of them at this point. An enumeration and a brief characterization of a few of the more important will serve for the moment to impress the importance constitutionally of the period ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... Osborne, Dobbin and Amelia, the author has succeeded admirably. They are wonderfully true to nature, and indicate even a finer power of characterization than is exhibited in the more strongly marked personages of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... including a sentimental description of Palestine, written in oratorical style. Joseph Efrati (1820) wrote an historical drama, Meluhat Shaul ("The Royalty of Saul"), which deserves mention for its fine conception. And Judah Mises, in his two works, Tekunat ha-Rabbanim ("Characterization of the Rabbis"), and Kinat ha-Emet ("The Zeal for Truth"), opposed Rabbinic tradition and the authorities of the Middle Ages. His antiquated rationalism called forth the severe reproaches of Rapoport. Nevertheless he stirred up a grave controversy, which gave rise to a series of consequences ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... in the main, is the story of James Schuyler Grim, (Jimgrim) a remarkable characterization, beginning as an American "Lawrence in Arabia" and evolving into a human but unapproachable high priest of the occult. There is Jeff Ramsden, the strong man and his closest friend, who with the Australian, Jeremy Ross, make up the triumvirate of Grim, Ross, and Ramsden, with their henchman ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor

... enabled Carlyle, who was as frugal as his parents, to relieve his father of the expense of his support, and to save a few pounds. Meanwhile he read widely, and wrote of his reading at great length, and with considerable power of satiric characterization, to some of his college friends. But he found himself "abundantly lonesome, uncomfortable, and out of place" in Annan, and from the first disliked teaching; while his "sentiments on the clerical profession" were "mostly of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... gratified vanity will help you on the way. Seriously, this is a real request. I want your opinion, your impression. I want to see how she will affect you. I don't say I ask for your advice; that, of course, you will not undertake to give. But I desire a definition, a characterization; you know you toss off those things. I don't see why I should n't tell you all this—I have always told you everything. I have never pretended to know anything about women, but I have always supposed that you knew everything. You certainly ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... of sentiment and humorous characterization. Nothing more individual, and in its own way more powerful, has been done in American fiction.... The story is a ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... interesting, and its characterization is fine and strong. Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is laid, and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to realize the nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jerusalem and Roman life ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... or a reputation, drawing a character. The last is perhaps the most disputable of the catalogue. How many of his personages are realities to us when we have read, and not mere labels for certain modes of thought or conduct? Well, characterization is not the first, but only the second thing with him; what is said matters rather more than who says it; he is more desirous that the argument should advance than that the person should reveal himself; nevertheless, nothing is ever said that is out of character; while nothing can be ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... place of religion and philosophy. And yet, some of the highest and finest of known poetic flights have been in the expression of religious and philosophical truth; while on the other hand Wordsworth's characterization of poetry turns the cold shoulder to that which is neither knowledge nor science, the all-powerful passion of Love—probably the most universal fount and origin of poetry since the human race began to express its thoughts and feelings at all. Coleridge enlarges ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... over more than once with reference to its characterization of Douglas. I could not share her opinions. Why could she not see that Douglas had always done his best? After all, what of the law? Douglas could not be patient with the rules that related to a land title while his thoughts were far afield in plans for the territorial greatness ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... Massinger; in Addison's "Cato" the strict rules of the French stage were preserved, but its stately and impressive speeches cannot be called dramatic. The "Revenge" of Young had more of tragic passion; but it wanted the force of characterization which seemed to have been buried ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... be difficult to find a juster or more accurate characterization of the French as pioneers. Although in the early days of settlement along the Mississippi and its tributaries they outnumbered the people of other nations, they made no deep impression. They got along admirably while they were sustained by the tonic-stimulus ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton

... of the close connection between Julius Caesar and Hamlet as regards date of composition and the characterization of Brutus and Hamlet, interest attaches to Professor Gollancz's theory (Julius Caesar, Temple Shakespeare) that the original of the famous speech of Brutus to the assembled Romans (III, ii) may be found in Belleforest's History of Hamlet, in the oration which Hamlet makes to the Danes ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... of the novel lies in its characterization. The characters live before us and we see the workings of their minds and emotions with remarkable clarity. The mental struggles of Mischa between his love for Mery and his desire to help the oppressed Jews, always inhibited ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... complete characterization of all maxims by means of that formula, namely, that all maxims ought by their own legislation to harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends as with a kingdom of nature. * There is a progress here in the order of the categories of unity of the form of ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant

... reminded him how the President had retained him as Chief of Staff when he assumed office in 1913. The General, very much to my surprise, intimated that back of Pershing's attitude toward him was political consideration. I tried to reassure him and, indeed, I resented this characterization of General Pershing as an unjust and unwarranted imputation upon the Commander of the American ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... Somehow the characterization had struck Fred Starratt as very apt even in his younger days. And as he shook hands with Mrs. Hilmer these same words ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... having been presented by the Irish Players at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. "John Ferguson" is as serious and important a piece of work as he has ever done. In the development of his plot Mr. Ervine not only evidences a skill in characterization, but he shows also a knowledge of technique and a marked ability in the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... stand out so clearly in the memory? Why, for instance, do you think Lamb was so haunted by "Rose Aylmer"? Quote from Landor's poems to illustrate his tenderness, his sensitiveness to beauty, his power of awakening emotion, his delicacy of characterization. Do you find the same qualities in his prose? Can you explain why much of his prose seems like a translation from the Greek? Compare a passage from the Imaginary Conversations with a passage from Gibbon or Johnson, to show the difference between the classic and the pseudo-classic ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... to me, you see, with that characterization. It was as if I'd managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in the park outside and heard the President talking to himself about the chances of war with Russia and realized he'd sat down on a bench ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... he never shone before and when Henry turns on his talk he is a wizard. Meredith Nicholson, who has heard Henry talk at a dinner, in a recent number of Scribner's magazine, said of him: "He's the best talker I've ever heard. It was delightful to listen to discourse so free, so graphic in its characterization, so coloured and flavoured with the very soil," and that night at the English dinner, all of Henry's cylinders were hitting and he took every grade without changing gears. But my ears were eager for the man ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... answer to which none of those having their hands on the board could possibly know. Often, again, remarks are volunteered conveying information not possessed by any one of the writers. The distinct characterization of a personality is frequently seen,—and a personality of a very detestable sort. The language employed, frequently, is quite unprintable. The "ouija" lies as coolly and confidently as it tells the truth; in fact, it is dogmatically positive that its ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... we study it merely as a literary performance, we shall notice the effect of the handicap under which Mrs. Stowe labored at the time of composition, as well as her imperfect conception of the art technique of the modern novel. There are faults of plot, style, and characterization. Modern fiction would call for more differentiation in the dialogue of the different characters and for more unity of structure, and yet there are stories with all these technical excellencies which do not live a year. We ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... fundamentals, and guarded against change in a manner suited to the preservation of fundamentals. To put into it a regulation of personal habits, to buttress such a regulation by its safeguards, is an atrocity for which no characterization can be too severe. And it is something more than an atrocity; the Eighteenth Amendment is not only a perversion but also a degradation of the Constitution. In what precedes, the emphasis has been placed on the perversion of what was designed as a safeguard of liberty into ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin

... Countess Pardo-Bazan; but he belongs to their realistic order of imagination, and he is easily the first of living European novelists outside of Spain, with the advantage of superior youth, freshness of invention and force of characterization. The Russians have ceased to be actively the masters, and there is no Frenchman, Englishman, or Scandinavian who counts with Ibanez, and of course no Italian, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of Cincinnati, an organization which is composed of many of the leading Protestant ministers. On the occasion of the club's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1919, Dr. Dwight M. Pratt, then of the Walnut Hills Congregational Church, wrote a witty and apt characterization of each member. The following is his superb sketch of ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick

... beings whose life and whose sensual experience was limited to space of two dimensions. He gave his little book the title "Flatland," and it gained wide attention. In his Commencement address at Columbia last year, President Butler had the happy thought of applying the term in the characterization of certain aspects of the intellectual and political life of our time. He was speaking particularly of that absorption in the immediate problems of the day which makes almost impossible a true study and contemplation of the lasting concerns of mankind ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... Frothingham's version. Her success is worthy of the highest praise, and the mere English reader can scarcely fail to read the poem with the same delight with which it has always been read by those familiar with the German. Its charming pictures of domestic life, the strength and delicacy of its characterization, the purity of tone and ardent love of country which breathe through it, must always make it one of the most admired ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... passages, not because they are the best, but because they have a near application to Dryden himself. His own characterization of Chaucer (though too narrow for the greatest but one of English poets) is the best that could be given of himself: "He is a perpetual fountain of good sense." And the other passages show him a close ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... shop. The agent is making Herculean efforts to bamboozle an unsuspecting parvenu into buying an example of some very "advanced" painting. The canvas is fine persiflage in its clever psychological characterization of the sleek dealer and the stupid helplessness of the bloated customer and his wife, who seem hypnotized by the wicked eye in the picture. As a piece of modern genre in a much neglected field, it is one of the finest things of recent years. On the extreme ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... Russian spirituality and more of universal human nature; but I believe that all, or nearly all, of our American magazines would refuse it; not because it lacks picturesqueness, or narrative suspense, or vivid characterization—all of these it has in large measure. They would reject it because it does not seem to move rapidly, or because it lacks a vigorous climax. The Goltva swollen in flood lies under the Easter stars. As the monk Jerome ferries the traveler over to where fire and cannon-shot ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... Thackeray, essay is so much mixed up with narrative, and comment with characterization, that they can hardly be thoroughly appreciated in poor editions. The temptation to skip is almost irresistible, when wisdom can be purchased only at the expense of eyesight. We are therefore glad to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... first half of the eighteenth century. They are the stiffest and most lifeless of all forms of pseudo-classical literature; Addison, for his part, attempts not only to observe the three unities, but to follow many of the minor formal rules drawn up by the French critics, and his plot, characterization, and language are alike excessively pale and frigid. Paleness and frigidity, however, were taken for beauties at the time, and the moral idea of the play, the eulogy of Cato's devotion to liberty in his opposition to Caesar, was very much ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... not seen the teacher's face, but the incident had jarred the old wound; Miss Leary's description of the teacher, together with Plato's characterization, had stirred lightly sleeping memories. He was more or less abstracted during the remainder of the drive, and did not recur to the conversation that had been interrupted by coming upon ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... Wheel" is the title of a German story by Hermann Hesse, in which he severely criticizes the incompetency of the present school system to fully develop the youth. The characterization of the teachers' profession as Hesse puts it, does not only serve for Germany, but for all modern states in which governments strive to train the young for the purpose of making patient subjects and hurrah-screaming patriots of them. The author says ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... merciless discourse about Coleridge and Charles Lamb, and Swinburne's carnivorous lines, which take a barbarous vengeance on him for his offence, are on the level of political rhetoric rather than of scholarly criticism or characterization. Emerson never forgot that he was dealing with human beings. He could not have long endured the asperities of Carlyle, and that "loud shout of laughter," which Mr. Ireland speaks of as one of his customary explosions, would have ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... of a stickful or less, which merely announces the result of some distant or unimportant game. Taken in its shortest form it gives only the names of the teams, the score, the time and place of the game, and perhaps a word or two of general characterization. As it is allowed to expand in length it takes up as briefly as possible the following facts in the order in which they are given: the scoring, the comparison of play, the star players or plays. It is a mere announcement of the ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... of characters, captivating or engaging humorous or saturnine, villains, rascals, and men of good will. A tale strong and interesting in plot, faithful and vivid as a picture of wild mountain life, and in its characterization full of ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... in any child, a deepened sweetness, that completest touch of the perfect woman, "like perfume from unseen flowers, diffusing itself when the wind awakens, while we know neither whence the windy fragrance comes nor whither it flows." Perhaps this characterization is most noticeable in "Counterparts," which she called her small party of opposing temperaments: Salome, so gracious; Rose, like the spirit of a sunbeam; Sarona, so keen and incisive, his passion confronting Bernard's sweetness; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... and the Philosopher spent much of the following day—it was a legal holiday—with the Judge in his private den up on the third floor. This, as Camellia showed us once when the men were away, was a big, bare room—this was her characterization—principally fireplace, easy-chairs, books and windows. I liked it better than any other place in the house, for it was unencumbered with useless furniture of any sort, and the view from its windows was much finer than ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... characteristics of Middle-English poetry, but his general thesis, that the Rowley poems exhibit graces and refinements which are in marked contrast to the tenuity of idea and tautology of expression found in genuine works of the period, is supported by an argument which seems to be based on a characterization of the romances rather than on a close acquaintance with other Middle-English poetry. We notice a similar quality in what Scott says elsewhere concerning Frere's translation into Chaucerian English of the Battle of Brunanburgh: "This appears to us an exquisite imitation of the antiquated English ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... man of genius. Although he was very erratic, his ability was so great that when serious he captured not only the attention but the judgment of people. He was an eloquent speaker and had a faculty of entrancing the crowd with his wit and of characterization of his opponent which was fatal. I have seen crowds, when he was elaborately explaining details necessary for the vindication of his position, or that of his party which did not interest them, to remain with close attention, ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... made its appearance in Raphael, Correggio, and Buonarroti We even find it in Da Vinci's Last Supper. Yet in Raphael it comes attended with divine grace; in Correggio with faun-like radiancy of gladness; in Buonarroti with Sinaitic sublimity; in Da Vinci with penetrative force of psychological characterization. The Caracci and their followers, with a few exceptions—Guido at his best being the notablest—brought nothing of these saving ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... includes a brief characterization of the system with details on the domestic and international components. The following terms and abbreviations are ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... good diagnosis, if you are not a physician," said Dr. Beswick, laughing, partly at Phillida's characterization of Christian Science and partly at his own reply, which seemed to him a remark that skillfully combined wit with a dash of polite flattery. "But, Miss Callender,—I beg your pardon for saying ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... never quite the same. Courage as the first necessary value of life is most naively and simply expressed, perhaps, in the Poem of the Cid; but even here the expression is, as in all art, unique, and chiefly because it is contrived through solidly imagined characters. There is splendid characterization, too, in the Song of Roland, together with a fine sense of poetic form; not fine enough, however, to avoid a prodigious deal of conventional gag. The battling is lavish, but always exciting; and in, at least, that section ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... account of the exploring parties which Leif sent out, some of which he joined, while at other times he remained behind to guard the house. Here occurs, with curious abruptness, this graphic bit of characterization: "Leif was a large and powerful man, and of most imposing bearing, a man of sagacity, and a very just man ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... might be improved and its expressions strengthened, and much paraphrasing of it was engaged in. Finally the study of the selection was rounded out by a judgment—that is, a critical estimate of the work, a characterization of the author's style, and a resume of his chief merits and defects. The foundations were here laid for Grammar and Rhetoric as the great ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... of them of supplying the foreign information and the other of being the correspondent on home and clerical affairs. I don't know how many of them—if any—are women, but I seem to trace a female hand in some of the domestic details. But the book contains strong matter, too—both of narrative and characterization; as in the dying of Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and the picture of his lover, Madame de Vigerie. And there is something of the inspiration of the Holy Grail in that "Vision Splendid" which heartens Tristram Hungerford ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various

... the union and republican government as I have always believed or could desire them to be." The news-sheets which followed his progress from day to day coined the phrase, "era of good feeling," which has passed current ever since as a characterization of ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... permit, no better illustration of true dialect sketch and characterization might here be offered than Colonel Johnston's simple story of "Mr. Absalom Billingslea," or the short and simple annals of his like quaint contemporaries, "Mr. Bill Williams" and "Mr. Jonas Lively." The scene is the country ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... style and technique. And he does not criticize him, as does La Bruyere,[6] for paying too much attention to a man's external actions, and not enough to his "Thoughts, Sentiments, and Inclinations." Nevertheless his mind is receptive to the kind of individuated characterization soon to distinguish the mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne. A man can be A Flatterer or ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally

... terrific. The statement that his voice had failed has no valid foundation; it was as good when he challenged the cavalry-men to combat as in the best of his Thespian successes. In all acting that required delicate characterization, refined conception or carefulness, Booth was at sea. But in strong physical parts, requiring fair reading and an abundance of spring and tension, he was much finer than hearsay would ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... entirely lacking in movement. The Andreas is complete, and, if we except the long dialogue of Andrew and the Lord at sea, moves steadily towards the end with considerable variety of action. If the characterization is crude, the descriptions are vivid, the speeches are often vigorous, and the treatment of nature is throughout charming. It seems to me eminently suited by its subject and manner to stand as an example of the Old English religious ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown

... the experiments of his two predecessors, realized the new form better than any one before him had done. For he possessed the special gifts necessary to the performance of the task. He possessed, in the first place, a miraculous power of musical characterization. Through the representative nicety of his themes, through his inordinate capacity for thematic variation and transformation, his playful and witty and colorful instrumentation, Strauss was able to impart to his music a concreteness and descriptiveness and realism hitherto unknown to symphonic ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... to find that Wollust's aria became the Virgin's cradle-song, while Hercules's reply became the alto aria in which Zion is bidden to "prepare for the Bridegroom." But it does not warrant the inference that Bach's music lacks definite characterization: on the contrary, these two arias are the best demonstration of his profound insight into the possibilities of musical expression within his range. It is no part of his conception of art that Wollust should be represented by a Wagnerian Venusberg-music; the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... sentiment was the strong feature of his art. He was behind Giotto and Lorenzetti in power and in imagination, and behind Orcagna as a painter. He knew little of light, shade, perspective, and color, and in characterization was feeble, except in some late work. One face or type answered him for all classes of people—a sweet, fair face, full of divine tenderness. His art had enough nature in it to express his meanings, but little more. He was pre-eminently a devout painter, and really ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... houses in France, and of an episode that must have counted as one of the most agreeable in his uncomfortable career. The eighteenth century contented itself with general epithets; and when Jean-Jacques has said that Chenonceaux was a "beau lieu," he thinks himself absolved from further characterization. We later sons of time have, both for our pleasure and our pain, invented the fashion of special terms, and I am afraid that even common decency obliges me to pay some larger tribute than this to the architectural gem of Touraine. Fortunately ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... a "little dried-up, frightened woman in a black bonnet, with a handkerchief in her left hand"—so Mrs. Locke had written him. Haldane had smiled at the frank characterization—that, somehow, didn't sound like ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... literature, likewise, Americanism is not a final word either of blame or praise. It is a word of useful characterization. Only American books, and not books written in English in America, can adequately represent our national contribution to the world's thinking and feeling. So argued Emerson and Whitman, long ago. But the younger of these two poets came to realize in his old age that the New World and the ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... analogy, the infernal, the purgatorial, the paradisaical; such are the three typical female characters of Homer, ranging from guilt, through repentance, to innocence. In this framework lies quite all possible characterization. Naturally Agamemnon shows a bitter vein of misogyny, with only his wife in view; but he takes it all back when he thinks ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... sought to avoid not only evil but the appearance of evil. I count it one of the great privileges of my life to have been associated with him. The one thing in the book written by James H. Blount which aroused my ire was his characterization of Colonel Denby as a hypocrite. No falser, meaner, more utterly contemptible statement was ever made, and when I read it the temptation rose hot within me to make public Blount's personal Philippine record, but after the first heat of anger had ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... The small number of methods used in the selection of the right box, and the slight variations from the chief method, that of choosing the first box at the right end and then the one next to it, apparently justify Doctor Hamilton's characterization ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... a veritable museum of rare and interesting relics of antiquity. This characterization is justified by those vestigial and rudimentary structures that represent organs of value to human relatives among the lower animals, though they play a less active part at the present time in human economy. There is scarcely a single system that does not exhibit many or fewer of these rudimentary ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... is worth studying in detail. In undertaking a study of it Mr. Braun thought, and I readily concurred in the opinion, that he would do best not to essay an exhaustive history, but to select certain conspicuously interesting types and proceed by the method of close analysis, characterization and comparison. I consider his work a valuable contribution to ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... 'History of the Dutch Republic' is in my judgment a work of the highest merit. Unwearying research for years in the libraries of Europe, patience and judgment in arranging and digesting his materials, a fine historical tact, much skill in characterization, the perspective of narration, as it may be called, and a vigorous style unite to make it a very capital work, and place the name of Motley by the side of those of our great historical trio,—Bancroft, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... play, "The Plain Clothes Man," was produced by the North Brothers Stock Co., at the Majestic Theatre, Topeka. This well written play, with its novel and original characterization and its effective comedy lines, is now in the hands of two New York play brokers. Before many months, Mrs. Jarrell will be enjoying ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker

... the Virgin: "The neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream or hasty-pudding, that quivers when it is touched;" or of the picture of St. Ursula's companions, by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not to answer with a tu quoque ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... her latest characterization of herself, Margery had a nod and a pleasant smile for the young men behind the brass grilles as she passed on her way to the president's room in the rear. She found her father at his desk, thoughtfully munching the unburned ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... are nowhere better exhibited than in "Tartuffe." Compared with such characterization as Shakespeare's, Moliere's method of portraying life may seem to be lacking in complexity; but it is precisely the simplicity with which creations like Tartuffe embody the weakness or vice they represent that has given them their place as universally recognized ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

... WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as "a creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food" has always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets one to thinking ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... material of memory, till no one has patience to spin from it a continuous thread of thought." We have the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am struck with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks and Matthew Arnold's characterization of the Americans. Greek thought, it is said, goes straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was adapted to meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the short cut ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... Potter's characterization of Grace. It was no easy task for a girl of eighteen to thus assume the responsibility, but she had the courage, and Larry ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis

... has given in his America and the New Epoch a most correct engineering picture of the political situation in the world, with a fine characterization of the psychological peculiarities of the different races. Although this book was written in 1916, that is, before the end of the World War, it will be of permanent value; because of its deep psychological ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... who, though a Greek by birth and a Venetian by training, became more Spanish than the Spaniards during his long life at Toledo, strove constantly to express the difference between the world of flesh and the world of spirit, between the body and the soul of man. More recently, the extreme characterization of Goya's sketches and portraits, the intensifying of national types found in Zuloaga and the other painters who have been exploiting with such success the peculiarities—the picturesqueness—of Spanish faces and landscapes, seem ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... places he was to pass through, or to stop at on the trip, plainly marked. He was intelligent enough to observe everything of importance in the ports through which he passed, and it was interesting to hear him tell of the things he had seen, and his characterization of some of the people he ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... music of which "is gentle, tender, and full of Oriental feeling." 7. "John the Baptist," an oratorio,—twice performed by the University choir in one of the churches of Berlin. "A great charm is found in the peculiar sharpness of characterization which distinguishes this music. The solos and choruses, being held throughout in spirited declamation,—the music not being aggregated in conventional tone-masses, but developed vigorously after the sense of the text,—are distinguished ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... running characterization of the foremost personalities in the Socialist movement throughout the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1943. Stevens, a Cambridge Englishman, ranched, hunted, and made deductions. See characterization under "Bears and ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... time; and on this ground their propaganda of crudity and wasted effort has been taken up and carried forward since their time. And hence also the propaganda for a return to handicraft and household industry. So much of the work and speculations of this group of men as fairly comes under the characterization here given would have been impossible at a time when the visibly more perfect goods ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... then back again to Lucerne and round by the Stelvio to Venice and Verona, and finally through the Tyrol and Germany homewards. The ascent of the St. Bernard was told in a dramatic sketch of great humour and power of characterization, and a letter to Richard Fall records the night on the Rigi, when he saw the splendid sequence of storm, sunset, moonlight, and daybreak, which forms the subject of one of the most impressive passages ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... the Pioneer Press in its characterization of the deceased journalist when it says: "From attacking the private lives of the prominent and successful men of every quarter of the union and levying blackmail as the price of silence from those whose slips or frailties his keen hyena-like appetite for filth had enabled him to scent, ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... colossal has become more important than the rational is, I feel, misleading. For this is a branch of literature that is in many respects the most rational of all: it is a symptom of progress. These same critics also complain that a fantastic plot is frequently developed at the expense of characterization. To this, one may answer that at times what happens can be more important than the people to whom it happens. In essence, both charges derive from laying undue stress upon psychology as the only legitimate fibre ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... of the Black Prince. The well-told story records the adventures of two young English knight-errants, twin brothers, whose family motto gives the title to the book. The Spanish maid, the heroine of the romance, is a delightful characterization, and the love story, with its surprising yet logical ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Roberts Brothers' series of Famous Women, of which it is the sixth. We have only words of praise for the manner in which Miss Zimmern has written her life of Maria Edgeworth. It exhibits sound judgment, critical analysis, and clear characterization.... The style of the volume is pure, limpid, and strong, as we might expect from a well-trained English writer."—Margaret J. ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... Tennyson, who was not a man among men—being shy as a whip-poor-will, seclusive as flowers which haunt the woodland shadows—yet those reading him must know how accurately he reads the human heart; and his characterization of Guinevere, Pelleas, Bedivere, Enid, the lover in Maud, a Becket, the Princess, Philip, Enoch Arden, and Dora, are, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... gift was characterization, and no English writer, save Shakespeare, has drawn so many and so varied characters. It would be as absurd to interpret all of these as caricatures as to deny Dickens his great and varied powers of creation. Dickens exaggerated ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... victory which speaks in every line of this opening monologue marks the man who, in spite of the obscurity of his origin, feels his right to be first, and who, in this victory, celebrates the attainment of his birthright. Equally luminous by way of characterization is his exclamation to St. Olaf when he hears that he is King Magnus ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... pathos. The delineation of the female characters in this novel is especially admirable. Josephine and Laure are exquisite creations, and the Baroness and Jacintha, though different, are almost as perfect, considered as examples of characterization. In the invention and management of incidents, the author exhibits a sure knowledge of the means and contrivances by which expectation is stimulated, and the interest of the story kept from flagging. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... planting kernels of maize, on a journey (Dr. 65b) staff in hand and a bundle on his back, and fettered (Dr. 37a) with arms bound behind his back. His entire myth seems to be recorded in the manuscripts. The great abundance of symbolism renders difficult the characterization of the deity, and it is well-nigh impossible to discover that a single mythologic idea underlies the whole. God B is quite often connected with the serpent, without exhibiting affinity with the Chicchan-god ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas

... Copah, Vice-President Ford had spoken favorably of the trainmaster, recommending him to mercy in the event of a general beheading in the Angels head-quarters. "A lame duck, like most of the desert exiles, and the homeliest man west of the Missouri River," was Ford's characterization. "He is as stubborn as a mule, but he is honest and outspoken. If you can win him over to your side, you will have at least one lieutenant whom you can trust—and who will, I think, be duly grateful for small favors. Mac couldn't get a job east of ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... this work has been to sketch the various periods and styles of architecture with the broadest possible strokes, and to mention, with such brief characterization as seemed permissible or necessary, the most important works of each period or style. Extreme condensation in presenting the leading facts of architectural history has been necessary, and much that would rightly claim place in a larger work has been ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... Clarissa's moral reproof are integral parts of the poem. And as a result, perhaps, of its essential unity 'The Rape of the Lock' bears witness to the presence of a power in Pope that we should hardly have suspected from his other works, the power of dramatic characterization. Elsewhere he has shown himself a master of brilliant portraiture, but Belinda, the Baron, and Thalestris are something more than portraits. They are living people, acting and speaking with admirable consistency. Even the little sketch ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... the door. I told them that I was so poor that I had scarcely enough food for myself. That the little I had I was going to share with seven of my special friends; of course they all considered themselves included in that characterization. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... vols.). These are marked by clearness of statement, force of argument, and felicity of illustration. The style, although less direct and simple than that of his unofficial writings, is still excellent. A large part of the interest attaching to these early papers lies in their acute characterization of the diplomatists with whom he had to deal. His analysis of their motives reveals from the outset that thorough insight into human nature which was to count for so much in his subsequent diplomatic triumphs. Of his later notes and dispatches, such as have seen ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various



Words linked to "Characterization" :   acting, role, description, persona, playing, performing, epithet, playacting, character, theatrical role, portraiture, portrait, impression, portrayal, word picture, verbal description, delineation, part, characterize



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