Literary notes about Culmination (AI summary)
In literature, "culmination" is used to denote the peak or decisive moment of a narrative or process, marking the point where all prior elements converge into a singular, often transformative climax. It can describe the final high note in a natural progression—whether that’s the literal height of a landscape [1] or the ultimate expression of Gothic artistry [2]—as well as the emotional or ideological apex in character development or historical events [3, 4]. Authors employ the term to signal the moment when built-up tensions, themes, or endeavors reach their fullest expression, be it the zenith of personal ambition [5], the final act in a sociopolitical narrative [6, 7], or the artistic distillation of long-accumulated influences [8]. This layered use of "culmination" enriches the text by underscoring the importance of progression toward a defining, often irreversible moment.
- The coast around Gorran is very grand, and reaches its culmination in Dodman Point, sometimes called the Deadman, which rises to about 370 feet.
— from The Cornwall Coast by Arthur L. (Arthur Leslie) Salmon - That frontispiece of Rheims Cathedral, with its cloud of witnesses, is a culmination of Gothic art.
— from How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries by Elizabeth Boyle O'Reilly - Which of us can point out and say that was the culmination—that was the summit of human joy?
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - [2] Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), a French doctrinaire who taught that anarchy is the culmination of all social progress.
— from Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev - This is the culmination of my life's ambition, and that of my helper, Professor Blair!"
— from The Boy Ranchers; Or, Solving the Mystery at Diamond X by Willard F. Baker - The culmination, however, came when the United States battleship, Maine , was blown up in the harbor of Havana, February 15, 1898.
— from The Story of General Pershing by Everett T. (Everett Titsworth) Tomlinson - I think, after all, the sublimest part of political history, and its culmination, is currently issuing from the American people.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.
— from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
