Its original nucleus, the plausible excuse for the town's coming into prosperous existence, lies in the fiction of a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, groves, gardens, mansions, shops, and churches, and spread themselves along the banks of the little river Leam.

The fact that in modern times drama as well as epic and romantic fiction is usually composed in prose has made some critics dissatisfied with what to them seems to be an unsatisfactory criterion.

On the other hand Newman, while granting that a metrical garb has in all languages been appropriated to poetry, still urges that the essence of poetry is fiction.

For instance, the irrational elements in the Odyssey "are presented to the imagination with such vividness and coherence that the impossible becomes plausible; the fiction looks like truth."

Like Castelvetro and Sidney, he considers the vehicle of verse not essential to poetry, which, as a product of the imagination, he considers to be occupied with fiction.

For the Fable and Fiction is, as it were, the form and Soule of any Poeticall worke or Poeme.

So convinced was Jonson that the essence of poetry does not lie in verse but in fiction that Drummond reports, "he thought not Bartas a Poet, but a Verser, because he wrote not fiction."

So convinced was Jonson that the essence of poetry does not lie in verse but in fiction that Drummond reports, "he thought not Bartas a Poet, but a Verser, because he wrote not fiction."

Fiction remains for him the essence of poetry, for fiction in prose is poetry.

Fiction remains for him the essence of poetry, for fiction in prose is poetry.

The second is called the allegorical, and is the one that hides itself under the mantle of these tales, and is a truth hidden under beauteous fiction.

That the "beauteous fiction," the bella menzogna, of allegory is rhetorical in origin is clear from a passage in the Vita Nuova.

And the same fear of the possible evil moral influence of fiction is evinced in his famous condemnation of the Morte Darthur "the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye," and in his attacks on English translations of Italian poems and stories.

Nowhere does Ascham advance the claims of allegory as cloaking moral truth under the guise of fiction.

First of all for the litteral sence (as it were the utmost barke or ryne) they set downe in manner of an historie the acts and notable exploits of some persons worthie memorie: then in the same fiction, as a second rine and somewhat more fine, as it were nearer to the pith and marrow, they place the Morall sence profitable for the active life of man, approving vertuous actions and condemning the contrarie.

To Budé all history was a moral example and Puttenham's inclusion of didactic fiction is in line with much renaissance thought, which regarded the two as almost interchangeable.

When Ben Jonson writes in his Timber "For the Fable and Fiction is, as it were, the forme and Soule of any Poeticall worke or Poeme" the change had come.

25-26) misunderstands both his author and his rhetoric when he says, "The subject of poetry is fiction, or invention, arrived at by means of that form of the syllogism known as the example.

[430] A.H. Tieje, Theory of Characterization in Prose Fiction Prior to 1740 (Minneapolis, 1916), p. 14.

Now Norma rapidly sketched the outlines for them and they listened breathlessly, for surely this true story was more thrilling than any piece of fiction, however highly colored.

I mention none of them, because I have no opportunity of collecting testimonies, or distinguishing between those accounts which are well proved, and those which owe their rise to fiction and credulity.

We must allow the unsuitable fiction attributing distraction to the divine Unity, for the sake of the words in which Mercy overthrows the arguments of Justice.

I am a great believer in presentiments: Socrates's demon was not a fiction; Monk Lewis had his monitor, and Napoleon many warnings.

In it, however, there is no longer the fiction of an imaginary character stalking like a shadow amid his descriptions and reflectionshe comes more decidedly forwards as the hero in his own person.

They, however, cannot have it (as we fully intend that certain small bodies, but huge feeders on fiction, among our acquaintance, shall have it) on Christmas morning,the dear old festival, that, as we write, is already near enough to warm our hearts with anticipation.