Euphues

[ yoo-fyoo-eez ]

noun

1. the main character in John Lyly's works Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1579), and Euphues and His England (1580).

Example Sentences

Of Sir Philip Sidney’s “Arcadia” and John Lyly’s “Euphues”: “The latter is a very dull book; the former I believe to be the dullest novel in the language.”

From Washington Post

One of the more illuminating pieces of criticism on Ros’ work is Aldous Huxley’s essay “Euphues Redivivus,” which he published in his collection On the Margin in 1923.

From Slate

Here, he discusses her prose style in relation to Euphuism, a form of writing that takes its name from John Lyly’s elaborately mannered 1578 didactic romance Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt.

From Slate

The polished conceits, the recondite illustrations drawn from every sphere of human thought or achievement, the similes sometimes as far fetched, and obscurely ingenious as those of Sir Piercie Shafton or of Euphues himself, suggest at times the inspiration of an universally-informed, and precociously-gifted youth who displays his cleverness before it is yet quite disciplined, and parades his patchwork learning before it is fully digested.

From Project Gutenberg

Their manner is not unlike that of the Arcadia and the Euphues which preceded them in England; and they express in point of style the tendency which simultaneously manifested itself all over Europe at this period, and whose chief exponents were Gongora in Spain, Marini in Italy, and Lyly in England.

From Project Gutenberg