After reading a Wikipedia article on it I still can’t undertstand what they are getting at
Here’s the link to the article at Wikipedia
Verisimilitude On Wikipedia Link
I get it has something to do with realism in books and such, but I still am not following it, can someone simplify it.
I realize this is about books but I put it here instead of Cafe Society because I really am looking for a definition I can understand
It’s not just “books and such”: verisimilitude just means having the appearance of reality. Something has verisimilitude if it looks, feels, etc., real.
If you read Daniel DeFoe’s A Journal of the Plague Years, you’d think it was an actual journal kept by a real person during the Great Plague. It’s not, though; DeFoe was a little kid during the plague, and the journal is a fictionalized account. DeFoe’s desired effect is an example of verisimilitude.
To use a crude example, in an otherwise utterly fantastic, implausible, unrealistic book about ghosts and vampires, Stephen King might toss in little tidbits that make his fantasy world feel like the real world… like the hero’s kids eating Cap’n Crunch cereal, or the hero listening to an AC/DC album, or the hero’s wife going shopping at Target.
Little details that make a scene feel more real, more true to life.
But isn’t there a connotation that the thing that seems real isn’t? For example, it doesn’t seem like you’d use this word to describe a true nonfiction work.
That’s quite correct. Commenting on the verisimilitude of a non-fiction work would tend to be an insult.
“Ronald Reagan’s memoirs are so realistic, I can almost believe he believed that’s what happened.”
Well, there you go again KneadToKnow
The Harry Potter books are a good example - on the one hand there’s a fantasy world of wizards and magic, but it’s embedded in what’s recognisably Britain in the 1990’s.
To elaborate a bit: It’s not quite the same thing as “realism”. If Godzilla blasts Tokyo with his atomic fire breath and melts a building, that’s not realistic at all, but it might be verisimilar. If, when Godzilla melts that building, a dog or cute child who was in that building directly in the path of the blast is completely unharmed, that violates verisimiltude.
It is my favourite song by Teenage Fanclub
great lyrics
The best example of verisimilitude I can think of was Orson Welles’ War Of The Worlds broadcast, which created a certain amount of concern.
My dictionary says: 1. The quality of appearing to be true or real. See Synonyms at truth. 2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real.