Literary notes about Intrigue (AI summary)
The term intrigue in literature often evokes a world of concealed plots, secret liaisons, and intricate power plays. In some works it underscores the shadowy ascent to power or the murky origins of a character’s fortune, as seen in Tolstoy’s depiction of a man's origin [1]. In others, it marks the corruption and scheming within courts and high society, where political machinations and personal betrayals collide [2][3]. At times, intrigue is entwined with the delicate dance of romantic and forbidden encounters, hinting at both danger and allure [4][5]. Even in narratives with a lighter touch, the word captures the interplay of gossip and subtle deception, enriching the tapestry of relationships and ambition within the story [6].
- A man whose father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother—God knows whom she wasn’t mixed up with....
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimulation, was all gone together.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - The ‘man of fate and physic’ lost half his estates, which he had obtained through intrigue.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 by James Tod - “From the very beginning of the business, I suspected that there was some scoundrelly intrigue at the bottom of it.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - In Act 4 we find that both lovers have recovered from their infatuation, and the intrigue ends by mutual consent.
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson - A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce
