beside it because she needs it to re-emphasize her other identity as a college-educated elitist--though if she had half an ear she would write it as "nuttin'." Fallen
archness strikes again.
Despite his narrator's
archness, there is no cynicism in his work, not at the deep tissue level, anyway.
1999 marked the moment at which bullet time's heretofore itinerant troupe of signifiers stabilized within a particular narrative and stylistic frame, corralling its meanings and kicking off a chain of citation that would end, four years later, in
archness and decay.
Author's Note: When used in this context,
archness connotes
Despite the narrator's characterised combination of artlessness,
archness and occasional light mockery, it is held that, so far as it goes, the book's factual matter can be taken at face value.
(4) As she tells her readers with considerable
archness, the shared race of slaves and slaveowners, or the provenance of African Americans from one region, like the North, does not correspond with better behavior:
Her down-to-earthness is a world away from the lofty
archness of someone like Dame Shirley Bassey, say.
Beneath the nicknames, the teasing, the bad-Dickensian
archness of her letters to him--"Hoi know oi is er very bad woifie boot oi looves yew very mooch hoondemeath," and so on--one can feel her helplessness.
The show trades largely on its naughtiness which just about sustains the two-hour run although I found the
archness of some of the humour a bit cringe-making.
The flag and its stories of valour and honour offer a "comforting feeling of rootedness, historical continuity, and cultural integrity," a safe harbour in the storm of "cynicism,
archness, and pervasive lack of seriousness, commitment, and authenticity they feel characterize their own age" (p.
The serrated edge of the opening track, The View From The Afternoon, has the excitability of Bloc Party (without the arty
archness) wedded to the terrier charm of a young Liam Gallagher.
Oliver Twist uses various comic devices (irony, satire, comic
archness, comic exposure, etc.) and it can be as cruel in the situations it presents as Brewer implies that medieval and Renaissance comedy are, but it remains essentially comedy for all its determination to dwell darkly on poverty and crime.
Beyond establishing a conversational connection, this gambit functions, in essence, as a pickup line akin to the latter-day cliche, "Do you come here often?" If there is genuine surprise beneath the smokescreen of
archness, it might be interpreted as, "Why haven't I met you yet?" or, in the plot's providential frame, "Where have you been all my life?" Surprise, then, is an effective cover-emotion, even as it generates an erotic spark in the mental friction of question and answer, action and reaction.
And also I think that costume dramas have gotten sort of hoary, whereas the
archness and the extremeness--especially of certain animators--I adore some of that stuff.