Literary notes about Traverse (AI summary)
In literature, "traverse" is often used to evoke a sense of moving through both tangible landscapes and abstract realms. Writers depict arduous journeys across rugged or challenging terrains—as when rough country is navigated by vehicle ([1]) or when characters must cross vast oceans and deserts ([2], [3])—while the term also lends itself to more metaphorical passages through ideas or states of being, such as working through a complex question ([4]) or mentally crossing the expanse of human experience ([5]). Its usage, whether describing the physical act of traveling across streets, marshes, or mountainous regions ([6], [7]), or the nuanced exploration of inner thought and emotion, demonstrates the word's capacity to unite the literal with the allegorical in storytelling.
- [432] A tract of rough country was now reached, difficult to clear and difficult to traverse with a vehicle.
— from Toronto of Old by Henry Scadding - A hundred miles, and only one day to traverse them!
— from Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne - Generally he is born in Tibet, the holy land, and to reach him the caravan has often to traverse the most frightful deserts.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - S.—I have presented these considerations, that you might carefully traverse the whole question and count all the costs.
— from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I - Thought can more easily traverse an unexplored region than it can undo what has been so thoroughly done as to be ingrained in unconscious habit.
— from How We Think by John Dewey - Akaky Akakiyevich was first obliged to traverse a kind of wilderness of deserted, dimly-lighted streets.
— from Best Russian Short Stories - They were at the end of the passage the whole length of which Raoul had been accustomed to traverse before knocking at Christine's door.
— from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
