Meaning of vraisemblance | Babel Free

Definitions

verisimilitude

uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“Recognition of this first level of vraisemblance need⟳ not depend⟳ on the claim⟳ that reality is a convention produced by language.”

“Vraisemblance does not entail “realism” in the sense⟳ that Ian Watt gives it in The Rise⟳ of the Novel. It is not the “realistic particularity” ([1957] 1974, 17) of the processes of experience⟳, as Watt defines his “formal realism.” Rather, vraisemblance takes the guise of “elegant concentration,” not typical of the novel in Watt’s account (30).”

“The notion of vraisemblance, “in whose name⟳ all the literary battles were fought, is at the root of all criticism” (Bray 1931, 192; c'est en son nom que se livrent toutes les batailles littéraires, elle est à la base⟳ de toutes les critiques). Derived from Aristotle’s “probable,” in the rediscovery of the Poetics in Renaissance Italy, vraisemblance takes the key hierarchical position in seventeenth-century neoclassicism (see⟳ Duprat 2009) and maintains it until well into the eighteenth century (see⟳ Kremer 2011).”

CEFR level