Literary notes about Angelic (AI summary)
The term “angelic” in literature has been used with remarkable versatility, often straddling the line between the divine and the human. Early works like Milton’s Paradise Lost invoke angelic qualities to signify nobility and celestial virtue ([1], [2], [3]), while other texts employ the adjective to describe both genuine spiritual purity and ironic or satirical traits. In some instances, “angelic” underscores a sublime, almost otherworldly beauty or benevolence ([4], [5], [6]), and in others, it functions as a playful or provocative epithet—mixing the heavenly with the earthly, as seen in the blunt, erotic context of a Victorian novel ([7], [8]). This duality is further highlighted in works that juxtapose angelic features with more flawed human temperaments, exploring an interplay between purity and imperfection ([9], [10], [11]). Thus, across genres and periods, “angelic” serves as a multifaceted descriptor that enriches characterizations and themes by invoking an idealized, yet sometimes paradoxical, quality of being.
- Whom thus the Angelic Vertue answerd milde.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton - Betwixt these rockie Pillars Gabriel sat Chief of th’ Angelic Guards, awaiting night; About him exercis’d
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton - Betwixt these rockie Pillars Gabriel sat Chief of th' Angelic Guards, awaiting night; 550 About him exercis'd
— from The Poetical Works of John Milton by John Milton - Saints of angelic countenance were stationed by resplendent gates, half-reddened by the glitter of rubies.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda - Last, tho' not least in love, ye youthful fair, Angelic forms, high Heaven's peculiar care!
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns - When a child, her head must have resembled one of Raphael's cherubs; it was still an angelic face, with its white locks of silvery hair.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen - It is heavenly; fuck faster, you angelic fuckers.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous - my angelic mistress,” I cried, “the pleasure of your vivid description almost makes me faint with desire—oh!
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous - ‘I don’t know how to talk to you, Mrs. Huntingdon,’ said he, smiling; ‘you are only half a woman—your nature must be half human, half angelic.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë - She is just a perfect angel, while I am only angelic in spots and demonic in other spots.
— from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery - The gulf is the difference between the angelic and the diabolic temperament.
— from Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy by Bernard Shaw