Literary notes about Virulence (AI summary)
The term "virulence" in literature has been adapted to express both literal and metaphorical intensities. In descriptions of disease, writers emphasize pathogenic severity—Shelley portrays an epidemic's unparalleled virulence in Asia and its deadly escalation with typhus and plague ([1], [2], [3], [4]), while Mooney notes smallpox exhibiting full virulence ([5]). Conversely, in a metaphorical sense, authors attribute "virulence" to human emotions and abstract phenomena: Conrad uses it to describe an almost mischievous, clattering quality ([6]), Dickens and Hawthorne to denote the enduring sting of ill-will and religious hatred ([7], [8]), and even Freud likens cultural taboos to an infective virulence ([9]). In this way, the word traverses realms—from the tangible brutality of disease to abstract forces like enmity and social prejudice ([10], [11], [12], [13]).
- What wonder, that this year, when as we are told, its virulence is unexampled in Asia, that it should have occasioned double havoc in that city?
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Towards the end of October it dwindled away, and was in some degree replaced by a typhus, of hardly less virulence.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - On the contrary, the disease gained virulence, while starvation did its accustomed work.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - America had also received the taint; and, were it yellow fever or plague, the epidemic was gifted with a virulence before unfelt.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - A week later a number of those who had been present became sick, and the disease was recognized by Colonel Thomas as smallpox in all its virulence.
— from Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney - It was hopelessly cracked; but of an evening, at the slightest provocation, it clattered behind the customer with impudent virulence.
— from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad - The ill-will of Miss Knag had lost nothing of its virulence in the interval.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens - A general sentiment of pity overcame the virulence of religious hatred.
— from Twice-told tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Among most primitive people the taboo of the dead displays, if we may keep to our infection analogy, a peculiar virulence.
— from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud - Often it pleased the unfortunate young man to vex people with a lighter satire, yet still characterized by somewhat of snake-like virulence.
— from Mosses from an old manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time.
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. Du Bois - Rose had neither the discrimination nor the virulence to regard the little demon as I did, and they still preserved their former intimacy.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë - The long pent-up enmity against them burst forth with great virulence.
— from Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ by Aaron Bernstein
