Literary notes about Edifice (AI summary)
Writers deploy the word “edifice” to evoke both concrete physical structures and abstract frameworks that support society or thought. In many narratives, it designates stately, tangible buildings—be it a moss-grown stone construction that suggests antiquity and endurance [1] or a red-brick church that anchors a community’s identity [2]—while simultaneously symbolizing layered concepts such as philosophical systems or social order [3, 4]. This dual usage not only paints vivid images of grandeur and decay—as seen in accounts of crumbling ancient edifices [5]—but also reflects on the structural foundations upon which communities and ideas are built and deconstructed [6].
- The next remarkable object was a large edifice, constructed of moss-grown stone, but in a modern and airy style of architecture.
— from Mosses from an old manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne - This opening led up to the only Roman Catholic church in York, an edifice of red-brick, substantially built.
— from Toronto of Old by Henry Scadding - Where seek the magic ring which would raise a new social edifice on the remains of that which no longer contented men?
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - They have aimed at erecting an edifice of philosophy; but to my eye this edifice appears to be in a very ruinous condition.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - All that formed the edifice is now in ruin; the soil is strewn with the fragments.
— from The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo - When tradition and prestige had disappeared, the social edifice suddenly fell.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
