Literary notes about Heretic (AI summary)
In literature the word “heretic” is often deployed as a potent marker of dissent and deviation from established religious or political orthodoxy. Frequently imbued with a sense of moral and societal condemnation, it identifies characters or figures whose beliefs challenge the dominant paradigm. Writers such as Foxe use the term to portray individuals condemned to brutal fates—burnt alive or imprisoned—as cautions against straying from accepted dogma ([1], [2], [3]). At the same time, dramatists and novelists extend its use to insult or characterize those who, in a less formally religious context, are seen as provocatively defiant or dangerously unorthodox ([4], [5], [6]). In this way, “heretic” becomes a versatile literary tool that renders both the stakes of belief and the passion of dissent vividly tangible ([7], [8], [9]).
- It was otherwise, however, with Roger Only, a priest, who being condemned as an obstinate heretic, was burnt alive in Smithfield.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe - The priests taking umbrage at this, laid an information against him the next morning, and he was committed to prison as a heretic.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe - [220] affirmed, that the said Marsh was a heretic, burnt as such, and was a firebrand in hell.—Mr.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe - “If you care to know,” Matvey went on in a loud voice, as he, too, began to get angry, “you are a backslider from God and a heretic.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - “Are you trying to deafen us, you heretic?” cried Aunt Isabel.
— from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal - ‘No you are not a saint, but a backslider from God, a heretic and an evildoer! . .
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - The heretic has now darkened into a man of notorious and general profligacy.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - The important point is that the one heretic, in the sense usually attached to the term, named as being in the city of unbelief, is a Pope.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri - 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
