Literary notes about Combustion (AI summary)
In literature, combustion often functions both as a precise scientific process and a rich metaphorical device. In scientific discourse, authors describe it as the rapid combination of a substance with oxygen—a process releasing heat and light that underpins phenomena from candle flames to internal-combustion engines [1][2][3]. At the same time, writers harness the vivid imagery of combustion to convey transformative or cataclysmic change, as when a "vast fire" is frozen in time at its most fervent moment [4] or when divine power hurls a figure from the sky amid ruinous flames [5]. This multifaceted use reflects combustion’s dual role in literature: a tangible chemical process with measurable effects and a potent symbol of intense, often irreversible transformation.
- We may then judge of the degree of solidity in which oxygen is combined in a burnt body, by the quantity of caloric liberated during its combustion?
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - That I do not understand; for it is not every kind of air, but merely oxygen gas, that produces combustion.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - The engine featured a single combustion chamber and four nozzles.
— from Rockets, Missiles, and Spacecraft of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution - Before him rose a grotesque mass of rocks, that resembled nothing so much as a vast fire petrified at the moment of its most fervent combustion.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - "Him th' Almighty power Hurl'd headlong flaming from th ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion" 74.
— from The Iliad by Homer
