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Word: meaningfulness (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
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Usage:

But it is significant that the meaning of historical events has frequently been obscured, not by the real historian but by social scientists who sought abortively to bring history into the realms of nature and thus deny the characteristically historical aspects of the human scene. In short, our culture has...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Essay: A Literary Remembrance | 4/25/1988 | See Source »

CALVINO tackles questions that have puzzled the driest and most difficult literary critics of the century, but he does not share their obsession for inventing or redefining terms. He does not bully the reader with tortuous grammar, or leave gaps and ambiguities in his logic as examples of the defects...

Author: By W. CALEB Crain, | Title: Re: 20th Century Literature | 4/23/1988 | See Source »

In his effort to convey complex ideas about literature, Calvino's most effective tools are mythology and visual imagery--what he calls icastic imagery, an archaic word in English, though common in Italian, from the Greek eikastikos, meaning "figurative."

Author: By W. CALEB Crain, | Title: Re: 20th Century Literature | 4/23/1988 | See Source »

Icastic imagery can be found in the models of the crystal ("the self-organizing system") and the flame ("order out of noise"), which Calvino steals from a debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky on the philosophy of science. Under the emblem of the crystal, language is a privileged place...

Author: By W. CALEB Crain, | Title: Re: 20th Century Literature | 4/23/1988 | See Source »

THE main problem with this play is the script. To say it's inane would be an understatement. Paul, the banker, is accused of not producing, of being a mere paper-mill. Does this symbol for an age offer the remotest response? Forget it. An unsavory type whom you can...

Author: By Jonathan M. Moses, | Title: Big Deal | 4/22/1988 | See Source »

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