Citations:verisimilitude

English citations of verisimilitude

English

			1671		1836 1885	1904 1977
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […]. Of that Sort of Dramatic Poem which is Call’d Tragedy.”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J. M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 5:

  It ſuffices if the whole Drama be found not produc't beyond the fift Act, of the ſtyle and uniformitie, and that commonly call'd the Plot, whether intricate or explicit, which is nothing indeed but œconomy, or diſpoſition of the fable as may ſtand beſt with veriſimilitude and decorum;

• 1836 — Walter Scott, The Origins of Christianity: With an Outline of Van Manen’s Analysis of the Pauline Literature

  This assertion, which there is no attempt to prove, is so totally devoid of verisimilitude, that it will afford no passage over the gulf which the destruction of the Pictish people opens in the history of Scotland.

• 1885 — Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado

  Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

• 1904 — Thomas Whittaker, The Origins of Christianity: With an Outline of Van Manen’s Analysis of the Pauline Literature

  This presentation of Paul, too, in spite of its greater verisimilitude, is one that cannot be held for historical as a whole.

• 1977 — Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Part 2, Chapter 5, 1969. Translated from Italian by William Weaver.

  He must have promptly rejected an alternative explanation which would better fulfill the demands of verisimilitude (“My wife, poor thing, in her nervous condition, now is afflicted also with sleepwalking!”), seeing the laborious tasks to which the resumed somnambulist devotes herself: kneeling at the edge of a pit, she anoints the earth with murky philters (unless the implements she holds in her hand are to be interpreted actually as acetylene torches scattering sparks, to melt the lead seals of a coffin).

• 2002 — Donna Tartt, The Little Friend

  But this clarity was deceptive, lending treacherous verisimilitude to what was largely a fabular whole, for in other places the story was worn nearly transparent, radiant but somehow featureless, as the lives of saints sometimes are.

French citations of verisimilitude

• 1818 — Michel de Montaigne, Essais de Michel de Montaigne

  Cette apparence de verisimilitude qui les faict prendre plustost à gauche qu’à droicte, augmentez la;