Literary notes about LEVITY (AI summary)
In literature, levity is employed with a range of meanings—from a light, buoyant humor to a critique of frivolity in situations that demand solemnity. Some authors use it to evoke youthful or transient gaiety, as when it suggests a fleeting, almost reckless lightness in character or style [1],[2],[3]. Others caution against an inappropriate tone of levity that undermines the gravity of serious subjects, lending a satirical edge or even moral reproach to a narrative [4],[5],[6]. In varying contexts, levity becomes not only a stylistic device to temper or punctuate the narrative but also a vehicle for social commentary, subtly questioning decorum and the balance between wit and earnestness [7],[8],[9].
- ligereza f levity, giddiness, hastiness.
— from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós - She is young and apt: Our own precedent passions do instruct us What levity's in youth.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - Previously the unknown man had walked, with levity indeed and lightning quickness, but he had walked.
— from The innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton - Jones exprest some indignation at this levity, and spoke with the utmost contrition for what had happened.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding - And this, Lavinia, is my reason for objecting to a tone of levity.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens - ‘I believe the dead are at peace: but it is not right to speak of them with levity.’
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - The mood of levity, of 'I don't care,' is for this world's ills a sovereign and practical anaesthetic.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James - It should be therefore the Concern of every wise and virtuous Woman, to keep this Sprightliness from degenerating into Levity.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - For the specific gravity of bodies is, as it were, their love, whether they are carried downwards by their weight, or upwards by their levity.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine
