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Literary notes about Labyrinthine (AI summary)

In literature, “labyrinthine” is often employed to evoke a sense of intricate complexity, whether describing physical spaces or abstract concepts. It can depict tangible, winding environments such as maze-like streets, twisting stairways, or even vast, confusing structures that challenge orientation ([1], [2], [3], [4]). At the same time, the term is used metaphorically to illustrate convoluted ideas, elaborate arguments, or intricate emotional landscapes that resist simple interpretation ([5], [6], [7], [8]). Thus, across various contexts—from foreboding natural settings and ornate architecture to the nuanced realms of thought and feeling—the adjective imbues the narrative with layers of complexity and mystery.
  1. I rode in the dark and rain through the labyrinthine streets of unpeopled London.
    — from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  2. It was a labyrinthine stairway of infinite charm, winding between pines and climbing plants.
    — from Work [Travail] by Émile Zola
  3. The crowd follow at our heels as we tread the labyrinthine alleyways, that seem as interminable as they are narrow and filthy.
    — from Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume II From Teheran To Yokohama by Thomas Stevens
  4. Beyond it lay the labyrinthine twists of the palace hallways.
    — from Project Daedalus by Thomas Hoover
  5. Has indeed any European, any Christian freethinker, ever yet wandered into this proposition and its labyrinthine consequences ?
    — from The Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
  6. Error is manifold and its paths are labyrinthine.
    — from The Expositor's Bible: The Pastoral Epistles by Alfred Plummer
  7. The syntax fast deteriorates into ever more labyrinthine structures.
    — from After the Rain : how the West lost the East by Samuel Vaknin
  8. If they are rich in thought, they are also luxuriant in labyrinthine sentences that puzzle even the initiated in the Ziph language.
    — from The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 1, January 1862 Devoted to Literature and National Policy by Various

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