Meaning of Caligulism | Babel Free

Definitions

Madness, especially when of an extravagant or sadistic nature.

countable, uncountable

Examples

“The laſt token of your Caliguliſm ſhall be the Sacrifices vvhich he appointed of Pheaſants and Peacocks to his Deity: & accordingly your Friend the Author of the Friendly Debate hath ſacrificed a Pheasant, and I have ſacrificed a Peacock to your Divinity; and I hope it vvill be therefore henceforth and for ever to me propitious and favourable.”

“Alas! It would be endless to tell you all his Calligulisms.”

“By contrast, Valéry's "Caligulism" is, above all, a narcissistic attitude which aims to achieve conquest of the Self: such an attitude intensifies Self-awareness by meditating objectively on images of power.”

“A paradigmatic declaration of the break with socialist realism was the 1952 speech, at the Congress of Yugoslav Writers in Ljubljana, by Miroslav Krleža. Affirming the revolutionary role of art, he fervently denounced the dogmatism dominating Yugoslav cultural policies in the late 1940s as “aesthetic Caligulism,” arguing that “writing does not equal describing nor prescribing.””

CEFR level