Word: meaningfulness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Behind the flag-draped coffin, bearing the cocked hat of an Admiral of the Fleet, marched 2,500 servicemen and women from the British armed forces and those of other nations that had special meaning to the World War II hero. There were Sikhs in white turbans from his beloved...
The very idea of decadence, with all its fleshly titillations and metaphysical phosphorescence, excites that kind of Spenglerian anxiety. A lot of Americans seem inclined to think of themselves as a decadent people: such self-accusation may be the reverse side of the old American self-congratulation. Americans contemplate some...
Players in the game can pile up examples but still have difficulty arriving at any generality. Decadence, in one working definition, is pathology with social implications: it differs from individual sickness as pneumonia differs from plague. A decadent act must, it seems, possess meaning that transcends itself and spreads like...
Richards' work in the '20s--especially his books "The Meaning of Meaning" and "Principles of Literary Criticism"--turned recent literary criticism toward linguistics, semantics and theories of meaning.
In "Practical Criticism," Richards developed a theory of poetic meaning and understanding based on poem critiques by students who did not know whose work they were discussing.