bombast
As bombast (also Bombastik from English bombast of medium french Bombace to medieval Latin bombax "Cotton") is called in rhetoric and later in the literary criticism a bloated by excessive verbiage speech - the word meaning according - ausstopft an empty shell with a lot of filler, to give weight to the inadequate framework of thought. Similar to the gay style, it arises from the excessive accumulation and incorrect use of stylistic and rhetorical means such as B. metaphors and comparisons as well as an exaggeratedly nested, rambling sentence structure that makes it difficult for the listener or reader to grasp the context.
Above all in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries one encounters the bombast in the works of those poets who are not among the literary top class and who wanted to make up for this with an impressive length of their work. Today, the term is mainly used in literary criticism for "bombastic" and uncomfortably rambling poetry and prose works and "literary noise".
supporting documents
- ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. An encyclopedia of common knowledge. 4th, completely revised edition . Leipzig 1885–1890. Vol. 3, p. 176.