adoxography

plural adoxographies

1. rhetoricuncountableusuallyFine writing on a minor or trivial subject.

   The Voyage is kaleidoscopic composite of dream-vision, ideal journey, literary testament, adoxography, and mock epic.

   1991, Ellen D. Lokos, The Solitary Journey: Cervantes's Voyage to Parnassus [Studies on Cervantes and His Times; 1], New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, →ISBN, page 236

   5 more examples

   "ADOXOGRAPHY," […] The former word, with the still uglier "adoxographical," would seem to be of transatlantic origin. Some years ago I drew attention (9 S. xi. 425) to the use of the adjective in an American periodical (The American Journal of Philology, xxiii. 393).

   1910, William White, Notes and Queries, London: Oxford University Press, →OCLC, page 117

   Even Lucian's most playful exercises in adoxography, such as the Iudicium Vocalium or the Musica, can be rewritten and integrated into serious debate on contemporary issues.

   1990, Michael O. Zappala, Lucian of Samosata in the Two Hesperias: An Essay in Literary and Cultural Translation [Scripta Humanistica (series); 65], Potomac, Md.: Scripta Humanistica, →ISBN, page 7

   The common factor among all three authors is the indulgence in paradox: the courtesan represents a notional ‘opposite’ to the intellectual, and therefore scholarship on courtesans has an air of ‘adoxography’ about it.

   1997, Graham Anderson, “Athenaeus: The Sophistic Environment”, in Hildegard Temporini, Wolfgang Haase, editors, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW) [= Rise and Decline of the Roman World]: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Teil II: Principat. Band 34: Sprache und Literatur. 3. Teilband: Einzelne Autoren seit der hadrianischen Zeit und Allgemeines zur Literatur des 2. und 3. Jahrhunderts (Forts.), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 2181

   The conflation of these two figures is not only made possible by virtue of Despayre's association with the "unthrifty" vice of sloth, but also, and more importantly, because he justifies that vice through the deployment of sophistical adoxography. Beyond each orator's espousal of "ease," Belial and Despayre share a "rhetorical virtuosity" in the language they use to question divine purposes and manipulate their auditors through a variety of strategies often aimed at inverting the natural relationship between the "noble" and the "ignoble" – the very definition of adoxography.

   2008, T. Ross Leasure, “Spenser's Diabolical Orator and Milton's 'Man of Hell'”, in Christophe Tournu, editor, Milton in France, Bern: Peter Lang, →ISBN, page 169

   In The Praise of Folly (1511), [Desiderius] Erasmus, who was one of [Alexander] Pope's favorite authors, effectively revived this classical genre of adoxography, described by Emrys Jones as a "perverse or paradoxical encomia" involving "the rhetorical praise or defence of things of doubtful value".

   2010, Paul Giles, “The Utopia Tales”, in Transatlantic Insurrections: British Culture and the Formation of American Literature, 1730–1860, Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, →ISBN, page 24