Literary notes about Conformation (AI summary)
The term "conformation" has been employed in literature to denote the arrangement or structure of both physical bodies and abstract constructs. In earlier works, such as those by Edgar Allan Poe ([1], [2]) and Diogenes Laertius ([3]), it describes literal physical shapes—whether pondering a being's form or noting an unusual physical trait in a creature—while later authors like Charles Dickens ([4]) and Kersey Graves ([5]) also employ it to underscore distinguishing bodily attributes. Additionally, this term evolves into a metaphorical tool; for instance, Edmund Burke uses the idea of optics to suggest that a politician’s manner of seeing the world might be as distorted as his physical conformation ([6]), and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, in Frankenstein, uses it repeatedly to indicate a form suited to enduring harsh environmental conditions ([7], [8], [9]). The concept is further extended into abstract realms, with Cicero ([10]) and Jules Verne ([11]) drawing parallels between physical configurations and the structuring of the mind or artistic spaces.
- I pondered upon their conformation.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe - I pondered upon their conformation.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - And once, seeing a bull of a monstrous conformation, having a womb, he said, “Alas!
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius - Being an orphan of a chubby conformation, he then took to rolling, and had rolled into the gutter before they could come up.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens - If it possesses the well-known physical conformation of the tiger, we are never deceived or misled when we assign it a predatory disposition.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves - The optics of that politician must be of a strange conformation, who beholds everything in this distorted shape.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke - Yet I did not heed the bleakness of the weather; I was better fitted by my conformation for the endurance of cold than heat.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Yet I did not heed the bleakness of the weather; I was better fitted by my conformation for the endurance of cold than heat.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Yet I did not heed the bleakness of the weather; I was better fitted by my conformation for the endurance of cold than heat.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Other philosophers call every such conformation of the mind a vain motion; but you term it “the approach and entrance of images into the mind.”
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero - "While you lay yonder without life or motion, I undertook a reconnoitering journey into the conformation of this other gallery.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne