Point (literature)

See also: Point

A point is an approval of the consistent spirit in the highlighting of an unexpected relationship between two ideas by the strange bringing together of two words.

The example quoted by Marmontel, makes well seize the nature of the point: “A horse having fallen into a cellar, crowd piles up, and one wonders: “How to draw it from there? - It is quite simple, known as pleasant, it has there only to draw it out of bottle. ”

Although these kinds of features of a sometimes doubtful spirit, rather have their place in the light remarks of the life that in literary works, certain kinds made their profit of it. Thus, the clear Song, the Verse of light comedy, the Saynète S or scenes puff out, the Poème airspeed indicator did not scorn them. The epigram, according to the expression of Boileau, is often only one decorated witty remark of two Rimes.

The banters consisting all effects of words were little of setting in the serious kinds. Cicéron however did not exclude it from the oratorical language, making it undoubtedly return in what the Romans called facetum soft atque , the soft one, liking it, that they so naturally mixed in all their works with the low register and the severe one.

Molière does not have, with the example of Old, moved back, even in its stronger creations, in front of a word game which makes highly a situation comic, an exaggerated feeling. Thus, in the Misanthropist , when Philinte extasy on the “pretty fall, in love, admirable” of the sonnet of Oronte, Alceste exclaims:

the plague of your fall, empoisonnor, with the devil!

you had made some with you breaking the nose.

Such features must be rare, and it is necessary, to pass, that they are well in situation.

The points and other effects of words became sometimes a fashion, a fury in all the kinds of Prose and Poésie. The literatures of Europe of of it were full. The Italy, the Spain, the France made great use of what one called Concetti, of Gongorisme S, Euphuisme, etc Boileau has, in the poetic Art , ( II , 105), marked the incursion thus, under their French name of points, these flashes of wit:

Jadis of our authors the ignored points

Were of attracted Italy in our worms.

the vulgar one, dazzled of their false approval,

With this new charms ran greedily.

the favor of the public exciting their audacity,

Their number impetuous flooded the Parnassus:

the Madrigal initially was wrapped by it:

the Sonnet proud itself was struck by it:

the Tragédie made its dearer delights of them:

the reduced decorated its painful whims of them:

a hero on the scene had care to be avoided some,

And without point a lover did not dare any more to sigh….

prose accepted it as well as the worms:

the lawyer with the Palate roughcast of it his style,

And the doctor in pulpit sowed the Gospel of it.

Source

Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 1620

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