Literary notes about misanthrope (AI summary)
Literary authors deploy “misanthrope” as a versatile label that illuminates characters marked by self-imposed alienation or a biting disdain for society. Its usage can be both ironic and deeply tragic—ranging from characters jaded by the indignities of human behavior, as seen when a once-compassionate soul devolves into confirmed misanthropy [1, 2], to witty portrayals that leverage social isolation as a source of humor or satire [3, 4]. The term additionally evokes a rich intertextual legacy, recalling figures such as Timon and Alceste [5, 6] and resonating with the legacy of Molière’s celebrated work [7, 8], thereby allowing writers to explore themes of disillusionment and social critique across various narrative landscapes.
- He had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of ennui , and became a confirmed misanthrope.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - He had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of ennui, and became a confirmed misanthrope.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - And how could he not have turned misanthrope, when in every man he saw a potential lover for Odette?
— from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust - "We've had that," replied the misanthrope on the sofa.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - But Aristoxenus, in his Miscellanies, says that his habits were not very different from those of Timon and Apemantus, for that he was a misanthrope.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius - He has been a misanthrope rather than a miser, Alceste rather than Harpagon."
— from Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3 by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon - although not translations, were based, in a sense, upon Molière's Ecole des Femmes and Le Misanthrope .
— from From Chaucer to Tennyson With Twenty-Nine Portraits and Selections from Thirty Authors by Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers - [7] In Molière's comedy Le Misanthrope, (Tr.) .
— from Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness by Henri Bergson
