Literary notes about Clinquant (AI summary)
Clinquant is deployed in literature to evoke a sense of flashy, often superficial ornamentation that both dazzles and provokes critical commentary. It appears as a descriptor for opulent displays of gold and grandeur, capturing the glittering allure of extravagance and national character [1], while also denoting a tarnished, less appealing glitter that hints at empty or deceptive beauty [2]. At times, the term carries an ironic weight, used to lampoon the excess of ornamentation in art and verse—for instance, when contrasting the false splendor of tinsel with the genuine merit of classical works [3][4]. Whether painting a vivid picture of a gaudy townscape or critiquing ostentatious finery, clinquant serves as a multifaceted emblem of both sensory delight and aesthetic criticism [5][6].
- To day the French, All Clinquant all in Gold, like Heathen Gods Shone downe the English; and to morrow, they Made Britaine, India:
— from Henry VIII by William Shakespeare - But, reflecting on the choice moral of it, he looked at the little tarnished clinquant before him, and was content to endure.
— from A Jay of Italy by Bernard Edward Joseph Capes - "The expression is Boileau's, Mademoiselle, in ridicule of the 'Sot de qualite,' who prefers— "'Le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile.'
— from The Parisians — Volume 03 by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron - [22] I must entirely agree with Monsieur Boileau, that one verse of Vergil is worth all the _clinquant _or tinsel of Tasso.—
— from A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century by Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers - My eyes rejoice in the shine of it; its clinquant sound is music in my ears.
— from Trivia by Logan Pearsall Smith - Cabs rattled, and the whole clinquant town wore its best air of unreality, which it puts off alone upon the morning of a revolution.
— from Thirteen Stories by R. B. (Robert Bontine) Cunninghame Graham
