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Literary notes about Performed (AI summary)

The word "performed" in literature carries a rich and multifaceted meaning, often emphasizing the deliberate, ritualistic, or formally executed nature of an act. In many texts, it describes the carrying out of rituals and ceremonies—from sacred rites and sacrifices ([1], [2], [3]) to religious services and rites of passage ([4], [5], [6]). Yet, its use is not confined to ceremonials alone; it extends to everyday tasks, skilled operations, and even miraculous feats ([7], [8], [9]), thereby marking the distinction between mere occurrence and an act imbued with purpose or grandeur. Authors also employ "performed" to underline actions tied to habit or duty, as seen in mundane operations or habitual movements ([10], [11]), and even in the dramatization of performances on stage ([12], [13]). Thus, across diverse contexts from mythology and religion to science and everyday life, "performed" enriches narrative by conveying intentional action and tangible accomplishment.
  1. Sometimes, over such trees, where people often hear the tokway and get a fright, the above quoted incantation and rite are performed.
    — from Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski
  2. It was a sacrifice to the manes of his parents, performed with the hope that their souls would come and taste the good things set before them.
    — from Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos (Vol. 1 of 2) by Henri Mouhot
  3. The wedding was duly performed and the young couple sat down to the wedding-feast.
    — from The Fables of Aesop by Aesop
  4. No layman may approach the sacred spot while the mystic ceremony is being performed.
    — from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer
  5. These three purificatory ceremonies must be performed after every birth.
    — from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 7 of 7 by Edgar Thurston
  6. Then the usual form of marriage is performed between the priest and his wife, symbolising the supposed union between Sun and Earth.
    — from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer
  7. “The one who performed an operation on Doña Maria charged high; so he was learned.” “Silly!” retorts Sinang.
    — from The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal
  8. I have performed too hard a task to-day, an extraordinary work indeed.
    — from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
  9. He performed miraculous cures.
    — from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves
  10. How unconsciously many habitual actions are performed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our conscious will!
    — from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin
  11. He had performed an act of duty; made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and deny, and was on better terms with himself.
    — from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë
  12. The fact that King Lear was performed at Court on December 26, 1606, is of course very far from showing that it had never been performed before.
    — from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. Bradley
  13. A famous London theater in which nearly all the great dramas of the Elizabethan age were performed.
    — from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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