Literary notes about sophistication (AI summary)
In literature, sophistication is portrayed as a multifaceted concept that can denote refined cultural awareness, cultivated manners, or, at times, a veneer masking simplicity and even moral ambiguity. It often emerges in contexts where a character’s refinement or worldly experience is both admirable and subtly questioned, as in the portrayal of maternal grace intertwined with life's weariness [1] or the suggestion that accrued knowledge may render one seemingly aged in spirit [2]. At other moments, the term highlights the artifice in social and intellectual presentations—from the carefully wrought elegance in fashion and lifestyle [3, 4, 5] to the sly irony of overrefinement that can obscure genuine emotion or truth [6, 7]. Authors also use the term to contrast natural simplicity with a cultured, sometimes deceptive complexity [8, 9, 10], underlining sophistication’s dual role as both a marker of development and a potential source of disillusionment [11, 12].
- [284] "A woman with children expects to look tired sometimes," Ruth replied, with the sophistication of a mother of three.
— from The Fifth Wheel: A Novel by Olive Higgins Prouty - Had she known her actual age she would still have seemed old from her knowledge of the world and general sophistication.
— from The Dust Flower by Basil King - His white wooden tables and ruddy apples and twisted fruit-dishes have lately become the etiquette of sophistication.
— from Modern Painting, Its Tendency and Meaning by Willard Huntington Wright - Her mood was in accord with her attire as though she had left her sophistication behind with her silks and her rouge.
— from Laughing Last by Jane Abbott - The Peter Pan collar preserves that "Little Girl" look, while the wooden buttons impart a note of sweet sophistication.
— from Juvenile Styles: Original Designs for Infants and Juveniles, Volume 4 by Mary Hoyer - The reality of moral distinctions, the essential wrongness of the sin, is obscured by a mist of sophistication.
— from Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers by Alexander Maclaren - It is your thought, your sophistication, your tear, your respectability, that is indecent.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - Di was in white, and her face was the face of an angel, so young, so questioning, so utterly devoid of her sophistication.
— from Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale - She chattered with the childish artlessness that at times veiled her sophistication.
— from The Highgrader by William MacLeod Raine - Her sophistication seemed more apparent than real—a disguise for her lack of knowledge.
— from Slaves of Freedom by Coningsby Dawson - Yet his natural imperturbability stood him bravely in place of sophistication.
— from The Settler by Herman Whitaker - He liked Europe, but in his heart he wearied of its over-sophistication, its bland diplomacy.
— from The Purple Heights by Marie Conway Oemler
