LITERALISM • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Literalism

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noun

Literalism n.

That which accords with the letter; a mode of interpreting literally; adherence to the letter.

(Fine Arts) The tendency or disposition to represent objects faithfully, without abstraction, conventionalities, or idealization.

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Etymology of 'Literalism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Literalism" Quotes from Famous Books

... book of Joshua has thus a poetic basis, it is only fair to remember that its prose narratives must not be treated as bald historical annals; they must be interpreted in a poetic spirit. There is the more reason to insist upon this, as a later editor, by a too inflexible literalism, has misinterpreted the very passage from the book of Jashar to which we have alluded. What the precise meaning of Joshua's fine apostrophe to sun and moon may be, is doubtful—whether a prayer for the prolongation of the day or rather ...

— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... the spirit of the master no longer survived. The doctrine of Ideas passed into one of numbers; instead of advancing from the abstract to the concrete, the theories of Plato were taken out of their context, and either asserted or refuted with a provoking literalism; the Socratic or Platonic element in his teaching was absorbed into the Pythagorean or Megarian. His poetry was converted into mysticism; his unsubstantial visions were assailed secundum artem by the rules of logic. ...

— Laws • Plato

... the Levites, of the seed of Zadok," and the gate of the sanctuary for the prince (xliv. 3), and his elaborate account of the borders of the land (xlviii. 13-23), place the earnestness of Ezekiel's literalism ...

— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... bodily, head and horns, from one speech to another. The European had to invent a new name for the boomerang or accept the name by which the Australian called it. The Frenchman, struggling with the English language, told a lady he was gangrened, he meant he was mortified. The cry for literalism is the cry for an impossibility; to put the chicken back into its shell, to return to the bows and ...

— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

Words linked to "Literalism" : philosophical system, inclination, school of thought, ism, doctrine, philosophy