Literary notes about assemblage (AI summary)
In literature, the term "assemblage" is used with striking versatility to denote a collection or grouping that can be either concrete or abstract. Authors employ it to vividly evoke scenes of people gathered in remarkable formations—whether it is a cozy congregation within a historic building [1] or a vibrant crowd responding to an event [2]—while also using it to suggest a cluster of ideas or qualities, as when thought is described as an assemblage of diverse concepts [3] or good qualities are gathered in one place [4]. At times, the word is even extended to depict natural juxtapositions or the way various objects or elements come together, echoing a sense of organic unity found both in the physical and in the intellectual realm [5] [6].
- Altogether, it was a very complete little world, this assemblage within the walls of the old wooden church at York.
— from Toronto of Old by Henry Scadding - Instantly a great cheer swelled from the throats of the assemblage of the masses.
— from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane - And can our thought, then, be anything but an assemblage or pack of ideas, each answering to some element of what it knows?"
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James - Can the god of Jealousy himself 487 find any fault with such an assemblage of good qualities?
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato - The assemblage, though whimsical, was all very natural.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 by Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - And he asserts that the sun is a vast assemblage of fire, and that it is larger than the moon.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius
