Definition and Examples of Belles-Lettres in English

Definition and Examples of Belles-Lettres in English In its broadest sense, the term belles-lettres (from the French, literally fine letters) can refer to any literary work. More particularly, the term is now generally applied (when used at all) to the lighter branches of literature (The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). Until recently, belles-lettres has similarly been used as a synonym for the familiar essay. Adjective: belletristic. Pronunciation: bel-LETR(É™). From the Middle Ages until the late 19th century, notes William Covino, belles-lettres and rhetoric had been inseparable subjects, informed by the same critical and pedagogical lexicon (The Art of Wondering, 1988). Usage note: Though the noun belles-lettres has a plural ending, it can be used with either a singular or plural verb form. Examples and Observations The emergence of a literature of belles-lettres in Anglo-America reflected the success of the colonies: it meant there now existed a community of settlers who took settling in the New World enough for granted not to write about it. Instead of histories, they wrote essays in which style mattered as much as content and sometimes more . . ..Belles-lettres, a literary mode that originated in 17th-century France, signified writing in the style and service of cultivated society. The English mostly kept the French term but on occasion translated it as polite letters. Belle-lettres denotes a linguistic self-consciousness testifying to the superior education of both writer and reader, who come together more through literature than through life. Or rather, they meet in a world reconstructed by literature, for belles-lettres makes life literary, adding an aesthetic dimension to morality. (Myra Jehlen and Michael Warner, The English Literatures of America, 1500-1800. Routledge, 1997)Reporting tr ained me to give only the filtered truth, to discern the essence of the matter immediately and to write about it briefly. The pictorial and psychological material which remained within me I used for belles-lettres and poetry. (Russian author Vladimir Giliarovskii, quoted by Michael Pursglove in Encyclopaedia of the Essay, ed. by Tracy Chevalier. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997) Examples of Belle-Lettrists Often the essay is the favoured form of the belle-lettrist. The works of Max Beerbohm provide good examples. So do those of Aldous Huxley, many of whose collections of essays . . . are listed as belles-lettres. They are witty, elegant, urbane and learnedthe characteristics one would expect of belles-lettres. (J.A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 3rd ed. Basil Blackwell, 1991) Belletristic Style A piece of prose writing that is belletristic in style is characterized by a casual, yet polished and pointed, essayistic elegance. The belletristic is sometimes contrasted with the scholarly or academic: it is supposed to be free of the laborious, inert, jargon-ridden habits indulged by professors.Reflection on literature has most often been belletristic: practiced by authors themselves and (later) by journalists, outside academic institutions. Literary study, beginning with research on the classics, became a systematic academic discipline only in the 18th and 19th centuries. (David Mikics, A New Handbook of Literary Terms. Yale University Press, 2007) Oratory, Rhetoric, and Belles-Lettres in the 18th and 19th Centuries Cheap print literacy transformed the relations of rhetoric, composition, and literature. In his review of [Wilbur Samuel] Howells British Logic and Rhetoric, [Walter] Ong notes that by the close of the 18th century orality as a way of life in effect ended, and with it the old-time world of oratory, or, to give oratory its Greek name rhetoric (641). According to one of the literature professors who occupied the chair of rhetoric and belles lettres established for Hugh Blair, Blair was the first to recognize that Rhetoric in modern times really means Criticism (Saintsbury 463). Rhetoric and composition began to be subsumed into literary criticism at the same time that the modern sense of literature was emerging . . .. In the 18th century, literature was reconceived as literary work or production; the activity or profession of a man of letters, and it moved toward the modern restricted sense, applied to writing which has claim to consideration on the ground of beauty of form or emotiona l effect. . . . Ironically, composition was becoming subordinated to criticism, and literature was becoming narrowed to imaginative works oriented to aesthetic effects at the same time that authorship was actually expanding. (Thomas P. Miller, The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997) The Influential Theories of Hugh Blair [Throughout the 19th century, prescriptions for] fine writingwith their attendant critique of literary styleadvanced an influential theory of reading as well. The most influential exponent of this theory was [Scottish rhetorician] Hugh Blair, whose 1783 Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres was the text for generations of students. . . .Blair intended to teach college students the principles of expository writing and speaking and to guide their appreciation of good literature. Throughout the 48 lectures, he stresses the importance of a thorough knowledge of ones subject. He makes it clear that a stylistically deficient text reflects a writer who doesnt know what he thinks; anything less than a clear conception of ones subject guarantees defective work, so close is the connection between thoughts and the words in which they are clothed (I, 7). . . . In sum, Blair equates taste with the delighted perception of wholeness and posits such delight as a psychological given. He makes this remark by way of connecting taste with literary criticism and concludes that good criticism approves unity above all else.Blairs doctrine of perspicuity further connects least effort on the readers part with admirable writing. In Lecture 10 we are told that style discloses the writers manner of thinking and that perspicuous style is preferred because it reflects an unwavering point of view on the part of the author. (William A. Covino, The Art of Wondering: A Revisionist Return to the History of Rhetoric. Boynton/Cook, 1988)

TIMEs Person of the Year Winners (1927-2017)

TIME's Person of the Year Winners (1927-2017) Since 1927, TIME Magazine has chosen a man, woman, or idea that for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year. Although TIMEs list is not an academic or objective study of the past, the list gives a contemporary viewpoint of what was important during each year. In 2018, TIME issued four separate covers, memorializing journalists who lost their lives in 2018. They are Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post columnist;  staff members of the Capital Gazette newspaper; Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo; and Maria Ressa, journalist and founder of Rappler. TIMEs Person of the Year Winners 1927 Charles Augustus Lindbergh 1928 Walter P. Chrysler 1929 Owen D. Young 1930 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 1931 Pierre Laval 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1933 Hugh Samuel Johnson 1934 Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1935 Haile Selassie 1936 Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson 1937 Generalissimo Mme Chiang Kai-Shek 1938 Adolf Hitler 1939 Joseph Stalin 1940 Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill 1941 Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1942 Joseph Stalin 1943 George Catlett Marshall 1944 Dwight David Eisenhower 1945 Harry Truman 1946 James F. Byrnes 1947 George Catlett Marshall 1948 Harry Truman 1949 Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill 1950 American Fighting-Man 1951 Mohammed Mossadegh 1952 Elizabeth II 1953 Konrad Adenauer 1954 John Foster Dulles 1955 Harlow Herbert Curtice 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighter 1957 Nikita Krushchev 1958 Charles De Gaulle 1959 Dwight David Eisenhower 1960 U.S. Scientists 1961 John Fitzgerald Kennedy 1962 Pope John XXIII 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson 1965 General William Childs Westmoreland 1966 Twenty-Five and Under 1967 Lyndon B. Johnson 1968 Astronauts Anders, Borman and Lovell 1969 The Middle Americans 1970 Willy Brandt 1971 Richard Milhous Nixon 1972 Nixon and Kissinger 1973 John J. Sirica 1974 King Faisal 1975 American Women 1976 Jimmy Carter 1977 Anwar Sadat 1978 Teng Hsiao-Ping 1979 Ayatullah Khomeini 1980 Ronald Reagan 1981 Lech Walesa 1982 The Computer 1983 Ronald Reagan Yuri Andropov 1984 Peter Ueberroth 1985 Deng Xiaoping 1986 Corazon Aquino 1987 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev 1988 Endangered Earth 1989 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev 1990 The Two George Bushes 1991 Ted Turner 1992 Bill Clinton 1993 The Peacemakers 1994 Pope John Paul II 1995 Newt Gingrich 1996 Dr. David Ho 1997 Andy Grove 1998 Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr 1999 Jeff Bezos 2000 George W. Bush 2001 Rudolph Giuliani 2002 The Whistleblowers 2003 The American Soldier 2004 George W. Bush 2005 Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Bono 2006 You 2007 Vladimir Putin 2008 Barack Obama 2009 Ben Bernanke 2010 Mark Zuckerberg 2011 The Protester 2012 Barack Obama 2013 Pope Francis 2014 Ebola Fighters 2015 Angela Merkel 2016 Donald Trump 2017 The Silence Breakers 2018 The Guardians and the War on Truth Person of the Year Fast Facts Charles Lindbergh  (1927) was the first and youngest person to receive the distinction at 25 years old.Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson, the woman whom English  King Edward VIII abdicated  in order to marry, was the first woman to receive the honor (1936).Although a number of people have received the honor twice,  U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt  is the only person to have been named three times: 1932, 1934, and 1941.Adolf Hitler, the murderous leader of Nazi Germany, received the honor in 1938- before he started   World War II. Hitlers  TIME  cover, however, shows him with dead bodies hanging above him.Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who was a U.S. ally during World War II, but who was ultimately responsible for the deaths of approximately 20 to 60 million of his own people, was awarded the honor twice.A whole generation was named in 1966: Twenty-five and Under.In 1982, the computer became the first object ever to receive the distinction.There are several years whe re large groups of people were nominated: the American Fighting-Man (1950), the Hungarian Freedom Fighter (1956), U.S. Scientists (1960), Twenty-Five and Under (1966), the Middle Americans (1968), and American Women (1975). The winner in 2006 was even more unusual. The winner was you. This choice was meant to draw attention to the impact of the world wide web, which had made each of our contributions both relevant and important.