purple passage

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Noun

purple passage - a passage full of ornate and flowery language

passage - a section of text; particularly a section of medium length

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For so John Barleycorn tricks and lures, setting the maggots of intelligence gnawing, whispering his fatal intuitions of truth, flinging purple passages into the monotony of one's days.

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For on occasion good writers do write prose devoid of purple passages, and in any case, it may be that the style of the Magna Moralia reflects the purpose for which the treatise was written: that is, the Magna Moralia may be lecture notes for an introductory course in ethics.

Simpson, Peter L. P.: The Great Ethics of Aristotle

Though fanciful, these modifications are in keeping with the character of the text itself, which is filled with purple passages and makes no pretense at objectivity.

Salvatore Aranclo: Rowing

Purple passages; Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and the ends of patriarchal poetry.

Purple passages; Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and the ends of patriarchal poetry

Under the 1959 Act, 'purple passages', even on the subject of anal sex, no longer necessarily meant a guilty verdict.

Trial of the century: when Penguin Books was acquitted of obscenity for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover, a door was kicked open to the social revolution of the 1960s. On the 50th anniversary of the trial, Geoffrey Robertson discusses the impact of a defining moment in modern legal history

I had been latching on to the purple passages like a child running after toffee.

Pakistan: I owe everything to him

It is impossible on a rehearsed reading to do justice to Edwards' fragmented narrative, the purple passages that juxtapose poetry and pastiche, the very funny scenes and the provocative ones, and Kelligan's somewhat bewildered presentation does little to convince us that this is anything but a misfired ambition that needs sensitive editing and experienced interpretation.

coffee break: Intriguing drama missing the plot; Review Solitude Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff ***

Ziolkowski compares neumation to highlighting or flagging "purple passages" in significant classical texts.

Nota Bene: Reading Classics and Writing Melodies in the Early Middle Ages

Baker's readings by contrast have a bird's-eye generality, and they are sometimes overwhelmed by his habit of recycling his own "abyssal" vocabulary and, on rather too many occasions, whole purple passages. On page 46 we read: And among the most prominent thematizations of such fields [of strangeness] over the last half century have been the wayward materiality of language and the wayward negativity of signification.