Literary notes about bare (AI summary)
The word "bare" in literature often serves to strip a subject down to its essential, unadorned essence, whether describing a physical setting, a gesture, or an abstract notion. Authors use it to convey stark vulnerability or the raw truth beneath veneer and artifice, as when Suetonius lays open the wounds of the republic [1] or when Dickens depicts characters resting on bare ground [2]. It is equally employed to underscore a stripped-down physical state—consider the portrayal of a character’s bare tiptoes maneuvering silently [3] or a magistrate delivering a case with bare assertion [4]—and to evoke emotional exposure, as when a soul is laid bare in intimate confession [5]. In this way, "bare" becomes a versatile literary device, imbuing descriptions with both clarity and a profound sense of immediacy.
- But listen, Conscript Fathers, while I tell you what reward was given to this rhetorician, and let the wounds of the republic be laid bare to view.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius - I ha’ gone home, many’s the time, and found all vanished as I had in the world, and her without a sense left to bless herseln lying on bare ground.
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens - He laid aside the great, soft fan, and obediently stole away, over the polished floor, on his bare tiptoes.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin - If the Judge had stopped with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made the mistake of trying to prove his position.
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain - I tell you as a friend, as the only man to whom I can lay bare my soul.
— from Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
