Literary notes about Garbled (AI summary)
In literature, “garbled” is used to denote texts or oral accounts that have become distorted, muddled, or poorly transmitted. It often appears when the original meaning or structure of a narrative is compromised, as seen when historical extracts lose their clarity [1] or when personal accounts are rendered barely intelligible [2]. The term also conveys the idea of deliberate tampering or inadvertent miscommunication, whether it be the scrambling of factual events in printed diaries [3] or the transformation of detailed messages during transmission [4]. Authors employ “garbled” not only to highlight the unreliability of certain records [5] but also to evoke ambiguity and maintain a sense of mystery over what is essentially a mangled version of the truth [6].
- A garbled version of extracts appeared in 1789, possibly being used as a Revolutionary text.
— from Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Complete by Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de - It was garbled truth, but there was enough to make his spine feel like ice.
— from Talents, Incorporated by Murray Leinster - It has always been garbled in the journals, and even in history.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain - He couldn't be absolutely sure that the specifications for the gadget hadn't been garbled in transmission.
— from The Foreign Hand Tie by Randall Garrett - She even hints that the text may have been garbled, after the author’s collapse, by some more sinister heretic.
— from The Antichrist by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - It is unthinkable that this effort to publish a garbled edition of the Book of Mormon was unknown to Grandin and those employed in his establishment.
— from New Witnesses for God (Volume 2 of 3) by B. H. (Brigham Henry) Roberts
