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Literary notes about LAMENT (AI summary)

The term "lament" in literature encompasses a broad spectrum of sorrowful expression, from personal grief to communal mourning. Authors employ it both as a verb and a noun to evoke deep emotional responses, such as the plaintive weeping of a bereaved community ([1], [2]) or the introspective sorrow of an individual mourning lost ideals or opportunities ([3], [4]). It often functions as a vehicle for dramatizing both historical and mythical tragedies, as seen when characters voice their despair in royal or heroic contexts ([5], [6]). In more ironic or tempered instances, the word captures a resigned acceptance of human misfortune, sometimes even diverging into subtle criticism of society’s or individuals’ inability to escape past woes ([7], [8]). Additionally, its use in ritualistic or lyrical passages emphasizes the timeless human need to mourn and communicate sorrow through art and ritual ([9], [10]).
  1. For two weeks, the people of the totem weep and lament, covering their bodies with white clay just as they do when they have lost a relative.
    — from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim
  2. That, from year to year, the daughters of Israel assemble together, and lament the daughter of Jephte the Galaadite, for four days.
    — from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete
  3. Your late worthy representative I lament from my heart.
    — from Toronto of Old by Henry Scadding
  4. I knew them all once—my eyes could weep—but now they burn, for now, my soul is fixed, and fearless!—I lament
    — from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe
  5. Lightly from fair to fair he flew, And loved to plead, lament, and sue— Suit lightly won and short-lived pain, For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.
    — from Marmion: A Tale Of Flodden Field by Walter Scott
  6. And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she shall sit desolate on the ground.
    — from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete
  7. “I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort.
    — from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
  8. ‘The path of my departure was free;’ and there was none to lament my annihilation.
    — from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  9. Ὀδυρμός, οῦ, ὁ, (ὀδύρομαι, to lament, bewail) bitter lamentation, wailing, Mat. 2.18; meton.
    — from A Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament by William Greenfield
  10. HONE AND HONERO, wailing expressions of lament or discontent.
    — from The Alchemist by Ben Jonson

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