Word: heroics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sometimes the image of the heroic victim holds up. Other times, however, the paragon of virtue is revealed -- as was Charles Stuart -- to be a very flawed human being. At which point the press, like an avenging ex-lover, typically executes an about-face and attacks with self-righteous fury, as if to say, "How dare you misrepresent yourself...
...mountain," he wrote to a friend, "grimly secludes itself in an immense circle of volcanic and comparatively barren country." The nearest palms were a hundred miles away. But without foreground vegetation, there was no hope of making the volcano look like a painting -- bringing it into the scheme of heroic Claudean and Turneresque landscape, the motif framed by arches of trees or cliffs in the foreground, with pictorial incidents unrolling back in space toward the distant peak. So, like all landscape painters, he "improved...