grand style
Lofty artistic manner
Grand style is a manner of artistic expression—particularly in rhetoric, painting, or architecture—characterized by elevated language, heroic subjects, and formal dignity.
The term comes from art criticism, where it describes work that aspires to noble themes and classical ideals rather than everyday subjects: Reynolds championed the grand style in portraiture.
More loosely, doing something in the grand style means doing it with impressive scale or flourish: They celebrated in the grand style, with champagne and fireworks.
- periodic sentenceSentence delaying completion
- monumentalismAesthetic of imposing scale
- metaphorImplied identity comparison
- heroismExceptional courage under duress
- symmetryInvariance under transformation
Renaissance · simile · proportion · universality · nobility · divinity · parallelism · anaphora · sublime · antithesis · Ciceronian · old masters · rhetorical flourish · purple prose · Romanticism · hyperbole · allusion · gilded
- rhetoricrhetoric, persuasion, oratory, argumentation, debate
- MiltonParadise Lost, blank verse, epic poem, fallen angels, Garden of Eden
- Classical Tragedytragedy, tragic hero, Racine, catharsis, pathos
grand styleminimalism
Aesthetic of reduction
minimalist style · simplicity · austerity · spareness · understatement
grand stylevernacular
Everyday regional speech
plain speech · common speech · homespun · conversational tone · everyday language
style, grand, stylish, styling, styles, styled, grandeur, grandly, grandest