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apology |
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apology [Gr.,=defense], literary work that defends, justifies, or clarifies an author's ideas or point of view. Unlike the ordinary use of the word, the literary use neither implies that wrong has been done nor expresses regret. The most famous ancient example, Plato's Apology (3d cent. B.C.), presents Socrates' defense of himself at his trial before the Athenian government. Sir Philip Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie and Defense of Poesie (both: 1580), which examine the art of poetry and its condition in England, apparently were written to justify the poets' craft after it had been attacked by critics. A third famous example, Cardinal Newman's spiritual autobiography Apologia pro Vita sua (1864), was written to clarify the Cardinal's views after they had been misrepresented in an essay by Charles Kingsley. apologyIn literature, an autobiographical form in which a defense is the framework for discussion of the author's personal beliefs. Examples include Plato's Apology (4th century BC), in which Socrates answers his accusers by giving a history of his life and moral commitment, and John Henry Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), an examination of the principles that inspired his conversion to Roman Catholicism. |
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| In what relation the Apology of Plato stands to the real defence of Socrates, there are no means of determining. In England alone, the incomprehensible and discourteous custom prevails of keeping the host and the dinner waiting for half an hour or more--without any assignable reason and without any better excuse than the purely formal apology that is implied in the words, "Sorry to be late. If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office, I would seek it in the common experience of an Englishman, without presuming to mention the unimportant fact of my having done that violence to good manners, in the days of a Russian war, and of a Court of Inquiry at Chelsea. |
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