Literary notes about LAPSE (AI summary)
Writers employ "lapse" as a multifaceted literary tool to indicate the passage or interruption of time, as well as shifts in memory, attention, or state of being. In many narratives it signals a pause that radically transforms circumstances—whether marking the subtle progression from one moment to the next [1, 2], or evoking vast historical intervals that imbue a text with epic scale [3, 4]. It is also used to highlight natural decay or the inevitability of change over time, as when geological processes or the fading of recollection are noted [5, 6], and can even suggest a fleeting failure or oversight in human behavior, as seen in instances of forgotten words or lapses of attention [7, 8]. Thus, "lapse" serves both as a literal measure of time and a metaphorical reflection on the transient nature of human experience [9, 10].
- After a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the halldoor.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - “But where are the folk?” said Henchard, after the lapse of half-an-hour, during which time only two men and a woman had stood up to dance.
— from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy - after the lapse of eight centuries, the Moonstone looks forth once more, over the walls of the sacred city in which its story first began.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - A day will come in the lapse of cycles, when the house of Assaracus shall lay Phthia and famed Mycenae in bondage, and reign over conquered Argos.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil - On the vast lapse of time, as inferred from the rate of deposition and of denudation.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin - Lapse of time renders them also constantly more vague.
— from Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney - He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which divided his attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse of a word.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - And so the play upon words always betrays a momentary LAPSE OF ATTENTION in language, and it is precisely on that account that it is amusing.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson - No trifling lapse into shallowness or inconsistency escaped his rebuke.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda - After the lapse of a few seconds, the room and the opposite wall were lighted up with a fierce, red, tremulous glow.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
