Or, indeed, that Waugh's satiric version of late-twenties doom and gloom--witnessed in the novel's chaotic violence, dynamic destruction, and gleefully sadistic satire--was originally conceived far more
bathetically as simple discouragement?
Indeed, it was a conservative tenet that the battle of Waterloo had been "won on the playing fields of Eton." (4) The once admired, inspirational "Vital Lampada" (1897), by the idealist imperialist Henry Newbolt, elaborated that idea with a lurid picture of disaster in the Sudan
bathetically transcended by the chipper, never-say-die spirit of an Etonian-model subaltern:
(Sheffield Local Register, 20 June 1867, 756) Although the list ends rather
bathetically with Broadhead's admission that he had initiated written threats, his confession would probably have resulted in the death penalty under normal circumstances.
This is a tale of fools trying to be great,
bathetically failing at it, and pig-headedly trying again.
The 2006 World Cup became known -- somewhat
bathetically -- as the "summer fairy tale." That's why for many Germans, the growing indications that not all may have been kosher in the awarding process is something like a "zero hour" for German football.
Turning to this figure, heroic in all preceding Scottish treatments and always larger than life, would not be so startling if the 'Champion of Scotland' had not failed so
bathetically in Ursula/Margaret's narrative.
The subsequent history of the conflict between the Ghibbelins and Guelfs that succeeds Sordello's death (VI.634-781) appears markedly, even
bathetically, abrupt by comparison.
(260-265) Defoe's tetrameter lines produce a swift conversational tone here and, in spite of the violent subject matter, effortlessly generate a sense of humorous lightness, not least through the
bathetically unceremonious death of great Gustavus.
At stake here is the question of proportion, and the bathetic ways in which literature might exaggerate or diminish its subjects: if literature gets size wrong, Pope argues, its power to reveal or to transform is seriously,
bathetically impaired.
The narrative uses both text and image to represent the revelation as shaming to the Wizard, with Petricic in particular representing the hairy, beetle-browed, fully matured man in an incongruous childlike and pigeon toed posture that
bathetically and discordantly amplifies his newly disempowered state.
And we could do much worse than to begin,
bathetically, with the preeminent character of this type recently featured on network television, Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, PA, Michael Scott.