Kafkaesque? Orwellian? Emersonian?

Certain influential authors have influenced society to a degree in which their name has become eponymous with certain concepts, the term Kafkaesque is distinguished by a "a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity". It's a fascinating premise and the mark of an author's legacy.

Anybody know any interesting literary eponyms? With relevance to phonetics and morphology, what type of names would you consider convenient for literary eponyms?

Kafka is Kafkaesque,
Orwell is Orwellian,
what works, linguists?

Dickensian, Shakespearian

Austenesk is sometimes used

I'll offer 2 of my favourite authors:


Ballardian (Ballard) - “resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.

Bellovian (Bellow) - "The Bellovian hero is a dangling man, suspended between worlds, between ideas, institutions, commitments or value systems. He is not a rebel in the conventional, romantic sense, although he may possess the instincts of rebellion; but he characteristically has a sense of separation from a world of treasons. . . . The Bellovian character moves through a series of recognition scenes, muted epiphanies, in which he learns to recognize these treasons; he often finds that his contemporaries accept them as "reality," that they are content to live with shabbiness, chicanery, violence and imposture. Bellow's heroes, however, all possess a deep, almost mystical impulse to resist such a vision of life. . . . Bellovian man resists limiting commitments, is suspicious of secondhand versions of reality, and struggles - often clumsily, comically - to defend his inner voices. Such a man is doubly the outsider, for he is an outsider first by spiritual circumstances and second by intellectual choice. Having made his choice, having declined to accept treason as his accomplice, the hero then faces the ultimate Bellovian dilemma, for simultaneous with his willed divorce from the world comes a gnawing sense that only through community, through acceptance of reality, can man achieve definition."

Draconian, for disproportionately harsh punishments;

Machiavellian, for amoral political maneuvering;

Calvinistic, for deterministic beliefs;

Sapphic is an interesting one, to describe things pertaining to female homosexuals.

This is off the subject, but did you know that if you are an inhabitant of the island Lesbos--whether you are a man or a woman--that you are called a Lesbian? I state the truth.

Shakespearean and Sapphic (already noted), Miltonic, Whitmanesque, Rousseauean, Proustean, Homeric, Dantesque, Borgesian... I have heard or read all of these descriptions. In an intriguing variation there are those terms derived from characters such as Quixotic, Faustian, Oedipal, etc...

Hmm, depends - naturally these kind of things can be applied to any name - English just has a harder time doing it than some other languages, so only a few have become staples.

Though I seem to use Eliotic, Chomskyite, and a few others, whenever I need them though, I tend to coin them as I go.

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Originally Posted by JBI

Hmm, depends - naturally these kind of things can be applied to any name - English just has a harder time doing it than some other languages, so only a few have become staples.

Though I seem to use Eliotic, Chomskyite, and a few others, whenever I need them though, I tend to coin them as I go.

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Is Chomksyite pejorative?

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Originally Posted by Jermac

This is off the subject, but did you know that if you are an inhabitant of the island Lesbos--whether you are a man or a woman--that you are called a Lesbian? I state the truth.

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hehehe yes.I'm born a half-lesbian myself.:cool: that's why the name lesbos is not used so much nowadays and instead the name of the capital mytilene is prefered for the whole island.

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Originally Posted by sixsmith

Is Chomksyite pejorative?

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Depends how you use it, though generally speaking yes, since there are people who just memorize Chomsky instead of reading for themselves anything. Though, anything pertaining to Chomsky I guess by the William F. Buckley's of this world is considered with disdain, so in that context it is aggressively pejorative.

I've never heard Eliotic, though it sounds rather unpleasant. True, though, it can be applied to any name.

Bangsian fantasy - stories set partially or fully in the afterlife - from John Kendrick Bangs - http://www.online-literature.com/john-bangs/

"Brownian motion" = s**t writing?

Cartesian – anything in or after the fashion of French physicist and philosopher extraordinaire, señor René Descartes. Not quite as convenient to throw around as Kafkaesque, but certainly quite as hip. :thumbs_up

And then there are some truly versatile names: Hitlerian vs. Hitleresque, depending on the weather, or whether you happen to be discussing his ambitious foreign policies vs. his aptitude for the fine arts.

You've got Shavian. Do we know who that is, ladies and gentleman? :)

I guess that "Nietzschean" is a very popular one if we're to think about it.

What about Whittiering!