Literary notes about Didactic (AI summary)
In literature, “didactic” is often used to indicate works or passages designed not just to please but chiefly to instruct, whether through moral lessons, ethical guidance, or philosophical exposition. At times it labels an author's deliberate attempt to weave educational content into artful language, as when a work is recognized for its forceful conversion of narrative into moral commentary ([1], [2], [3]). Yet the term may also carry a critical edge, suggesting that the work becomes too self-consciously instructive or even pedantic—imbuing the text with a tone that some readers find overbearing ([4], [5], [6]). This dual role, as both a commendation of instructive ambition and a critique of preachiness, shows the complex function of “didactic” in shaping literary style and purpose ([7], [8], [9]).
- He accordingly valued his didactic poems far above his other work; but it is obvious that much of his best poetry conveys no moral whatever.
— from A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems - The De Rerum Natura , a didactic poem in hexameter verse in six Books.
— from Helps to Latin Translation at Sight by Edmund Luce - Though it is one of the most highly artistic works in the language, it is at the same time one of the most didactic.
— from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I by Edmund Spenser - Didactic "poetry" wearies me, probably because it is not poetry at all.
— from Confessions of a Book-Lover by Maurice Francis Egan - Dirty Dick had always been insufferably dull, pompous, and didactic.
— from The Hill: A Romance of Friendship by Horace Annesley Vachell - “I have more than once received important information through my dreams,” said my companion, in the didactic manner which he loved to affect.
— from Round the Fire Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle - What I write about the performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the public as merely a cat's view of a king, and not of didactic value.
— from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain - But in her essays she is less wise, less racy and expressive, than in the didactic passages of her novels.
— from George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy by George Willis Cooke - “The principal difficulty in your case,” remarked Holmes, in his didactic fashion, “lay in the fact of there being too much evidence.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
