Literary notes about STREWN (AI summary)
The word "strewn" is deployed in literature to vividly convey the scattering or dispersal of objects, creating striking visual textures in both chaotic and serene settings. It often suggests a terrain that is either harsh and filled with debris, as when boulders are scattered across a tortuous tunnel [1] or bodies are lamentably dismembered across a battlefield [2, 3], or one that is artistically adorned with natural beauty, such as paths lined with flowers [4, 5] or floors carpeted with hay [6]. In some works, its use blurs the line between the physical and metaphorical, evoking memories or the passage of time—as in the way memory is depicted as littered with dated things [7]—while in others, it enriches descriptions of both the natural realm and human environments, from open oceans and rocky landscapes [8, 9, 10] to cluttered studies filled with scattered books [11, 12].
- How were we to see to make our way through this last boulder-strewn tunnel?
— from She by H. Rider Haggard - Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn with men killed and maimed (by his will as he believed)
— from War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy - What remained of him was strewn across the ground.
— from Second Variety by Philip K. Dick - That was my first step along a road that you have strewn with flowers ever since.
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott - This time she was expecting him, the path was strewn with flowers, and a thousand braziers were burning scented woods which perfumed the air.
— from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang - Many comfortable gray hens were clucking and scratching about the hay-strewn floor, and a flock of doves sat cooing on the roof.
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott - Thus memory gets strewn with dated things—dated in the sense of being before or after each other.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James - Could I not have riven his body in sunder and strewn it on the waves?
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil - He sees all ocean strewn with Aeneas' fleet, the Trojans overwhelmed by the waves and the ruining heaven.
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil - Great pieces of wreck drifted into the port, and the sea around the island rock was strewn with others.
— from Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker - Open books were strewn about on the table, the two chairs, and on the carpet near the table.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - In Laura’s room there were the marks of a confused and hasty departure, drawers half open, little articles strewn on the floor.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
