LITERALISM • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Literalism

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noun

Literalism n.

That which accords with the letter; a mode of interpreting literally; adherence to the letter.

(Fine Arts) The tendency or disposition to represent objects faithfully, without abstraction, conventionalities, or idealization.

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Etymology of 'Literalism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Literalism" Quotes from Famous Books

... amazement of every one who knew him, he married perhaps the dullest woman he could have found. Mrs. Poppleton not only never made a joke, but couldn't understand what joking meant. Only the flattest literalism was intelligible to her; she could follow nothing but the very macadam of conversation—had no palate for anything but the ...

— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... as the other," she suggested, "yet both fragments of an advanced knowledge that found its grave in the sea. The Wisdom of that old spiritual system has vanished from the world, only a degraded literalism left of its undecipherable language. The jewel has been lost, and the casket is filled with ...

— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever enters a personage like one of Shakspere's clowns, and takes position there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such is Slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and express itself illimitably, which in highest walks produces poets and poems, and doubtless in pre-historic times gave the start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the old mythologies. ...

— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... arises. The elements have been recited in terms fitted to the example of the invention thus far developed. The combination is broadly stated, but the terms of the elements are limiting. Cannot some ingenious infringer realize the invention by a similar combination escaping the literalism of the terms of the elements? It is at this stage that the claim must be carefully studied. The inventor, or some one for him, must assume the position of a pirate, and set his wits to work to contrive an organization realizing the invention but escaping the terms of the proposed claim. When ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... Persecution engendered sympathy; sympathy ripened into conviction; and the more heretics were confined in the prisons, the more heresy flourished in the streets. The popularity of Anne Hutchinson's teachings had demonstrated how eagerly the average man turned from the literalism of the Puritan clergy in response to the appeal of one who spoke "from the mere motion of the spirit." Quakerism was above all a spiritual gospel addressed to the emotions. Its humane and liberal teachings, ...

— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

Words linked to "Literalism" : ism, philosophical system, doctrine, tendency, inclination