Meaning of characterismus | Babel Free

Definitions

The rhetorical enargia used to describe a person.

uncountable

Examples

“In a considerable body of passages of characterismus, Spenser presents a detailed portrait of Britomart's heart and soul an anatomy of her passions.”

“Therefore, in respect to characterismus the majority of observations made by the television-evangelists describe the mental rather than physical state.”

“Such descriptive techniques as characterismus, prosopopoeia, ethopoeia, and topographia encouraged men to seek out the typical qualities in their experience and environment.”

“In Henry IV's concluding scene, Falstaff does nothing, but Richardson transforms the absence of action into evidence of thought; to fill the gap, he writes his own characterismus, or representation of Falstaff 's thought processes.”

“An analogous focus upon good continuation is to be found in the many forms of enargia or figures of description recorded by rhetoricians, such as anemographia (of wind), astrotesia (of stars), characterismus (of personality), chorographia (of nations), chronographia (of time), dendrographia (of trees), etc.”

CEFR level