Literary notes about Collection (AI summary)
In literature, the term "collection" appears in a variety of contexts, symbolizing both concrete assemblies and abstract aggregates. Authors use it to refer to tangible groups—such as curated sets of books, artworks, artifacts, or even natural specimens [1], [2], [3]—and to more figurative groupings, like sets of ideas, texts, or experiences that together form a cohesive whole [4], [5], [6]. In some works it displays a sense of ongoing accumulation, as when a character’s assortment of memories or belongings is implied to be never fully "closed" [7], while in other texts it signifies a methodical canonization of knowledge, exemplified by historical, religious, or literary compilations [8], [9], [10]. Through these diverse uses, "collection" acts as a flexible literary device that can denote both deliberate organization and the serendipitous convergence of elements into an entity greater than its parts.
- The glass cases containing the collection of butterflies were ranged in three long rows upon slender-legged little tables.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - Portrait in oils by Bastien Lepage; exhibited in the Salon, 1883; now included in the Pereira Collection.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo by Juliette Drouet and Louis Guimbaud - The count took the gentlemen into his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes.
— from War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy - The first collection, or canon, of the New Testament was prepared by the Synod or Council of Laodicea in the fourth century ( a.d. 360).
— from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I - A Collection of Sagas and other Historical Documents relating to the Settlements and Descents of the Northmen on the British Isles.
— from The Story of the Volsungs (Volsunga Saga); with Excerpts from the Poetic Edda - First, apparently, in the collection stood the "Hymn to Dionysus", of which only two fragments now survive.
— from Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica by Hesiod - “I trust that you don't consider your collection closed.”
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle - The fourth collection, the Atharva-veda , attained to this position only after a long struggle.
— from A History of Sanskrit Literature by Arthur Anthony Macdonell - “The world is a collection of things embraced by the heaven, containing the stars, the earth, and all visible objects.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius - In 1557 appeared probably the first printed collection of miscellaneous English poems, known as Tottel's Miscellany .
— from English Literature by William J. Long