vraisemblance

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French vraisemblance.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /vɹeɪsɑmˈblɑns/

Noun

vraisemblance (uncountable)

  1. (literary theory) verisimilitude
    • 2002, Jonathan D. Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature:
      Recognition of this first level of vraisemblance need not depend on the claim that reality is a convention produced by language.
    • 2017, Karin Kukkonen, A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics: Neoclassicism and the Novel[1], page 6:
      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).
    • 2017, Karin Kukkonen, A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics: Neoclassicism and the Novel[2], page 6:
      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).

Further reading

French

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /vʁɛ.sɑ̃.blɑ̃s/ ~ /vʁe.sɑ̃.blɑ̃s/
  • Audio:(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɑ̃s

Noun

vraisemblance f (plural vraisemblances)

  1. verisimilitude
  2. likelihood

Antonyms

Derived terms

Further reading