The New Criterion
The New Criterion is probably more consistently worth reading than any other magazine in English.
- The Times Literary Supplement
FeaturesModern English prose is usually dated from the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. However, so large a generalization requires qualification. Before the seventeenth century had well begun, Bacon for one was writing in a plain (even if highly figurative) style; in him a new cast of mind was conscious of the need for clear, distinct statements to express truth: For in a great work it is no less necessary that what is admitted should be written succinctly than that what is superfluous should be rejected; though no doubt this kind of chastity and beauty will give less pleasure both to the reader and the writer.So modern prose, or something close to it, was anticipated by some writers by a half century. Yet all did not change at once with the lapse of the half century. Milton among others in 1660 was still writing in the elaborate rhetorical style of ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 19 September 2000, on page 26 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/prose-greenberg-2347
rate this article for your user profile
E-mail to friend
|
Daniel Fuchs: “A man must make money” On the novelist and screenwriter Daniel Fuchs. The difficult justice of Melville & Kleist On the “issues of justice, especially social justice and law” in Billy Budd and Michael Kohlhaas. On two “schools” of reading “the mother of all novels.” Christopher, for better & for worse On the critic, polemicist & raconteur Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011).
Webcasts
Anthony Daniels on the Euro Crisis
Andrew C. McCarthy: The Muslim Threat
Roger Kimball: The Grim Future of Statism Weblog 
|
add a comment
you must have an account to post a comment. {register now}